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CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 



BY 



EZEKIEL OILMAN ROBINSON, D.D., LL.D. 

LATE PRESIDENT OF BROWN UNIVERSITY, AND FORMERLY PRESIDENT AND 

PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY AT ROCHESTER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY J 

MORE RECENTLY, PROFESSOR OF ETHICS AND APOLOGETICS AT 

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, AND LECTURER ON 

APOLOGETICS AND CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 

AT CROZER THEOLOGICAL 

SEMINARY. 





/S-^lSr-Od 



SILVER, BURDETT AND COMPANY, 
New York . . . BOSTON . . . Chicago. 
1895. 



V" 



> ■ •. N 



.Kfc^ 



Copyright, 1895, 
By Silver, Burdett and Company. 



The Library 
OF Congress 



WASHINGTON 



John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 



PREFACE 



The Lectures contained in this small treatise 
were given in the years 1892-93 and 1893-94, at 
the University of Chicago, and at Crozer Theo- 
logical Seminary, Chester, Pa. They are but the 
Second Part of what was originally designed 
to be a volume including both Apologetics and 
Christian Evidences, It had been the hope of 
the author to complete this volume in the sum- 
mer of 1894, but failing health delayed the work. 
In rewriting the Lectures for publication, he 
began with these now given to the public, and 
had proceeded as far as page 131, when he was 
obliged to lay down his pen, never again to 
resume it; they have have been completed 
chiefly from his unrevised notes, and have 
been added to only where their extreme brevity 
made some expansion necessary to clearness or 
to completeness of the thought. 



IV PREFACE. 



I wish to thank Rev. Robert Kerr Eccles, 
M. D., for the preparation of the Index, and 
Professor Milton G. Evans, Rev. F. F. Briggs, 
and Rev. B. D. Stelle, for kindly sending me 
their class-room notes, which furnished me with 
the order of the later Lectures, and otherwise 
aided me in completing them. 

HARRIET P. ROBINSON. 
Boston, February 21, 1895. 



CONTENTS. 



^att I. 

THE EVIDENCES SPECIALLY RELIED ON BY 
JESUS AND HIS APOSTLES. 

CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

Self-evidencing Power of Truth ii 

CHAPTER II. 

Miracles 13 

Sect. I. Objections to Miracles .... 14 
II. Value of Miracles as Evidence 21 

CHAPTER in. 
Prophecy 26 



VI CONTENTS. 



^m II 



ORIGINAL EVIDENCES WHICH ARE STILL 
AVAILABLE. 

CHAPTER L 
The Appeal to Consciousness 31 

CHAPTER II. 

Evidence from Miracles 33 

Sect. I. The Resurrection of Jesus ... 36 

II. Conversion of the Apostle Paul 43 

III. Person and Teachings of Jesus . 48 

CHAPTER IIL 
Evidence from Prophecy 56 

CHAPTER IV. 
Evidence from Christian Experience ... 70 



CONTENTS. VI 1 



^art HI, 



EVIDENCE FROM PAST AND PRESENT ACHIEVE- 
MENTS OF CHRISTIANITY. 



CHAPTER I. 

Beneficent Influence of Christianity . . 8i 

Sect. I. Allegations originating in Mis- 
judgment OF the Facts and 
Teachings of Christianity . . 82 

II. Objections arising from an Iden- 

tification OF Christianity 

WITH THE Church 93 

III. Positive Benefits of Christianity 98 

CHAPTER II. 

Conditions under which Christianity 

achieved its First Victories 112 

Sect. I. The Preparation wrought by 

THE Jews 113 

II. The Preparation furnished by 

THE Greeks 116 

III. Preparation by the Romans and 

THE Roman Empire .... 120 



Vlll CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER III. 

Divine Origin of Christianity as seen in 

Three of its Inherent Qualities ... 125 

Sect. I. Its Self-recuperative Power . 126 

II. Its Power of Self-development 131 
III. Expansiveness of the Spirit of 

Christianity 140 

CHAPTER IV. 

Divine Origin of Christianity as seen in 
THE Completeness of its System of Moral 
AND Religious Principles 144 

CHAPTER V. 
Divine Origin of Christianity proved by its 
Fitness to become the One Universal 
Religion 147 

CHAPTER VI. 

Inadequacy of the Visible Means of Chris- 
tianity TO THE Production of its Ends . 150 

CHAPTER VII. 
Philosophy of the Method of Producing 
THE Christian Type of Character ... 153 



INDEX 157 



CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 



A PROPER study of Christian Evidences pre- 
supposes a settled conviction, on the part of the 
student, of such fundamental truths of religion 
as the existence of God ; the immortality of the 
soul; the moral nature of man and an eternal 
moral law to which that nature responds; the 
opposition of man to the law of God and his 
need of redemption ; and the validity of the 
Sacred Scriptures as the History of God's re- 
demptive dealings with the race, and as the 
Record of His will and laws by which it should 
be lifted from its sinful degradation to purity, 
holiness, and a participation of His own Hfe. 

Accepting these truths, we may proceed to a 
consideration of the immediate evidences of the 
Divine origin of the Christian religion. These 
may be distributed under three general heads. 

First. Those adduced by Jesus and His 
Apostles, and then specially convincing. 

Second. Those adduced by Jesus 

"Plan 

and His Apostles, and still available. 

Third. Those developed in the progress of 
Christianity in the world, and now specially 
applicable. 



lO CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES, 



PART I. 

THE EVIDENCES SPECIALLY RELIED ON 
BY JESUS AND HIS APOSTLES. 

Too many treatises on Christian evidences 
seem to imply that the first and main reliance 
of Jesus was on the miracles He wrought. 
Brief examination of the Gospels, however, suf- 
fices to show that miracles were neither the first 
^ ., nor the principal evidence adduced, 

Evidences ^ ^ ' 

relied on by but wcrc rcsortcd to Only in dealing 
His dis- with minds already prepared to be 
ciassmed convinccd by them. Some were im- 
mediately convinced by what Jesus 
said and in Himself was; others required the 
persuasive influence of miracles, or of Divine 
interposition in His behalf ; others, few in num- 
ber, were won by a recognition of Jesus as the 
One foretold in Messianic prophecies. The 
evidences adduced by Jesus and His Apostles 
accordingly were : — 

I. An appeal to consciousness, or the self-evidencing 
power of truth. 

II. An appeal to Divine attestation by supernatural 
signs, or the working of miracles. 

III. An appeal to prophecy, or a showing that the 
prophecies were then being fulfilled. 



SELF-EVIDENCING POWER OF TRUTH, II 



CHAPTER I. 

SELF-EVIDENCING POWER OF TRUTH. 

1. It is noteworthy that, according to all four 
of the Gospels, the Twelve were won The twelve 
to discipleship by the teachings of wonCteach- 
Jesus, and not by His miracles. ing of Jesus. 

2. The first formal teaching of Jesus and 
avowal of His mission, according to Teaching of 
the first three Gospels, were at Naza- e^^d^^'" 
reth, and, immediately afterwards, at ^lii-acies. 
Capernaum. To His first miracles wrought at 
the latter place He was naturally led by His 
teaching. 

3. Jesus seems to have resorted to miracles 
only to reach those less receptive minds uncon- 
vinced by His teachin2:s. When His 

^ Miracles for 

teaching was objected to, He replied, imreceptive 
** Though ye believe not Me, believe the '^^^' 
works '' (John x. 38). And when Thomas refused 
to believe in the Resurrection except on visual 
and tactual evidence, the words of Jesus were, 
'' Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet 
have believed '' (John xx. 29). 

4. The teaching of Jesus is repeatedly said 
to have been with '' power " and '' authority,'' 



12 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

and officers sent to arrest Him declare, '' Never 
man spake like this man '' (John vii. 46). The 
"Power" *' power " and ''authority'* are not to 
and ''au- be explained by emphasis, or tone, or 

thority"of ^ , , . , , , ,r . 

the words pcrsonal bearmg, but by the self-evi- 
of Jesus. fencing power of the truth He uttered. 
This is evident from the general wonderment 
as to the source of His knowledge and wisdom, 
unlettered carpenter as He was (Matt. xiii. 54; 
Mark vi. 2). His teaching was not only wholly 
unlike the teaching then common, but carried 
such conviction to the heart as to be, in the 
minds of the Apostles at least, wholly unac- 
countable, unless Divine in its origin. *' Thou 
hast the words of eternal life," said Peter to 
Jesus ; *' and we believe and are sure that Thou 
art that Christ, the Son of the living God " (John 
vi. 68, 69). 

5. The Apostles' method of procedure was 
like that of their Master. Their first and main 
Apostles reliance, as is evident from the Acts 
Qf and from their Epistles, was on the 



relied on 



power 



truth. self-evidencing power of the truth. 



MIRACLES. 13 



CHAPTER 11. 

MIRACLES. 

A SECOND kind of evidence adduced by Jesus 

and the Apostles consisted of supernatural signs, 

ordinarily known as '' miracles/* They ^ . ^ 

'' ^ "^ Jewish ex- 

were wrought in obedience to a univer- pectationof 

sal Jewish expectation that the Messi- 
anic reign would be introduced and authenti- 
cated by them. In Jewish history successive 
dispensations — - patriarchal, Mosaic, and pro- 
phetic — had been miraculously introduced. 
Jesus, in working miracles, complied with the 
challenge, '^What sign showest Thou?" 

Three terms are used in the Gospels to desig- 
nate miracles; ** sign,'' ** power," and *^ won- 
der " ; the first denoting the design ; r^^^^ 
the second, the source: the third, the terms used 

to desig- 

effect on the beholders. The last and natemir- 
least important of these has unfortu- 
nately, through its Latin equivalent {miractihim), 
given to Theology the term '' miracle " as repre- 
sentative of all three. The Gospel of John com- 
monly uses the generic term ''works," expressing 
the twofold idea of '' source " and *' design." 
Combining the meaning of all the terms, we 
may, with proximate accuracy, define a miracle 



14 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES, 

as a phenomenon aside from the uniform course 
of nature, wrought by superhuman power, and 
adduced in attestation of one's claim to be a 
messenger from God. To add to this definition 
the statement that a miracle is either a violation, 
or a suspension of the laws of nature, or that it 
is wrought either by a hastening, or by a retard- 
ing of the processes of nature, is to give a theory 
of it rather than a definition. 

Section I. — Objections to Miracles. 

Objections have been urged against miracles 
on three grounds ; they are said to be incred- 
Miracies iblc, bccausc coutradictiug the uni- 
objected to fQj-jj|i|-y of nature I because, with our 

on three -^ ' ' 

grounds. scientific knowledge of nature, its forces 
and its processes, the occurrence of miracles 
cannot be conceived as possible ; because the 
occurrence of miracles, even if they could be 
conceived to occur, cannot be proved. 

I. Incredible because contradicting the uni- 
That they formity of nature. If nature be the 
un^formfty work of God, then God would contra- 
of nature, ^jj^^^ Himsclf in workiug miracles. 

a. The objection from uniformity of nature is 
discounted in the very idea of miracle. 

Miracle . . 

presup- Uniformity is presupposed by it. If 

poses uni- , i t • i 

formity of naturc were not uniform, miracles 
nature. could havc uo evidential value. 



MIRACLES, 15 



b. We have already shown a Divine or super- 
natural revelation to be both possible gupernat- 
and probable. Whatever can show the ^rainess of 
probability of such a revelation will makes 
show equal probability that the Divine ^i^^eiy 
Messeng^ers communicating it would be ^-ttested 

^ ^ Messenger. 

supefnaturally attested. 

c> According to every writer in the New Tes- 
tament, Jesus Christ was Himself a moral mir- 
acle, — the greatest conceivable. In jesus mm- 
the language of Simeon, '^ Set for a ^ciemXs 
sie^n fmiraclel that shall be spoken probable 
against. He could have been such natemir- 
only by a direct contradiction of the ^^^®^* 
uniformity of nature. But the uniformity of 
nature, in the sense of a combination of uni- 
formly acting forces, cannot be conceived as 
existing for its own sake. The material and 
physical are everywhere subordinate to the 
organic, the organic to the vital, the vital to 
the mental, the mental to the moral. If for 
moral ends the uniformity of nature was broken 
in the moral miracle of the personal sinless 
Jesus, then it is by no means incredible that 
the uniformity of nature should be broken 
in the lesser miracles wrought in support 
of the ends for which Jesus came into the 
world. 

d. The miracles of the Gospels — both those 
of healing, chiefly dwelt on by the Synoptists, 



1 6 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

The Gospel and those of majesty disclosing the 
h'irmor "" g'o^y of Jesus, dwelt on by John — are 
with the all in most perfect harmony with the 

spirit and • •. i ^ • • j i. u- 

teachings Spirit, character, mission, and teaching 
of Jesus. ^f Jesus, and are so fitted to win to a 
reception of Himself and His message as to fur- 
nish in themselves good grounds for believing 
them to have occurred, whatever may have been 
their relation to the uniformity of nature. 

2. The inconceivability of miracles in a world 
like ours, or the impossibility of their occurrence. 

They can be said to be impossible only on one 

of three grounds ; on the ground of a false 

definition of miracles as a violation of 

Miracles 

notimpos- the laws of nature ; or on the ground 

of a false theory of nature and of God's 

relation to it; or on the ground that physical 

science gives us so complete a knowledge of all 

the forces of nature, and of the laws regulating 

their action, as to warrant us in affirming that 

they aff*ord no scope for the interposition of the 

supernatural equal to the production of miracles. 

a. As to the definition. To define a miracle 

as a violation of the laws of nature is to inject 

into the definition an assumed or ar- 

tionof^ny" bitrary conception of its relation to 

natural or natural law. Nothing in Christianity, 

moral law. ^ 

or in the Christian Scriptures, warrants 
us in supposing that God ever accomplished any 
end by an arrest or a violation of any one of His 



MIRACLES, ly 



laws, physical, mental, or moral. The whole 
Christian system is an illustration of rigid con- 
formity to, and fulfilment of, every known spe- 
cies of law. The least breaking of the least of 
laws, or the slightest interference with orders 
of sequence physical, mental, or moral, would 
throw suspicion on the whole system of Chris- 
tianity as not of Divine origin. A violation of 
any moral law would be a signal of moral con- 
fusion and disorder throughout the realm of 
spirits ; a violation of the least of physical laws 
would precipitate disaster and ruin in the phys- 
ical universe. In order to the stabiUty of the 
universe every conceivable force in it must act 
in harmony with every other. The slightest 
interference with any one of them^ a violation of 
the law of the least of them, would throw the 
universe into chaos. 

b. A false theory of nature and of God's rela- 
tion to it. Thus, nature is conceived to be a 
self-existent and self-sustained system impossible 
of forces mechanical and chemical, ^ise theory 
which work uniformly and by a neces- o^^^^od's 

-^ -^ relation to 

sity inherent in themselves ; God, if He nature, 
exists, must exist apart from nature ; and if He 
works by it and through it must do so by com- 
ing to it from without and striking in upon its 
self-acting mechanism, a mode of action inad- 
missible, it is said, because inconceivable. But 
this deistic and dualistic theory of the world has 



1 8 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES, 

no real support either from science or philoso- 
phy. Science may detect mechanical and chem- 
ical modes of action in the processes of nature ; 
but modes are not causes, and can never account 
for the existence of phenomena. The nicely 
balanced interdependence and harmony among 
natural phenomena, resulting in a perfect equi- 
librium and unity of the whole, can be explained 
only as the product of an indwelling and ever 
present Intelligence and Will. With an intelli- 
gent Will thus ever present and working in and 
through the natural processes always uniformly, 
it certainly is not inconceivable that, working 
through two or more simultaneous and connected 
processes, it may produce unwonted phenomena 
on given occasions and in support of specific and 
definable ends. There is no more difficulty in 
conceiving the possibility of miracles so wrought 
than there is in conceiving of unwonted phe- 
nomena wrought by man, whenever he chooses 
to avail himself of known mechanical and chem- 
ical modes discernible in the processes of nature, 
or, of changes in the phenomena of the human 
organism in obedience to the dictates of an in- 
dwelling intelligence and directive will. In fact, 
the whole world, ourselves included, abounds 
in phenomena quite as marvellous in themselves 
considered as are the miracles of the New Testa- 
ment, but they fail to impress us because of the 
commonness of their occurrence. 



MIRACLES, 19 



c. The assumption that science has given us 
sufficient knowledge of physical forces and of 
physical laws to warrant us in affirm- ^^^ ^^ ^^^ 
ins: that no event is possible which is assumption 

, , . 1 . . . . r 1 that we 

clearly aside m its origin from natural havecom- 
causes. An event not produced by ^o^i^^gQ 
natural causes, it is said, is an uncaused ofaiipossi- 
event, in other words can be no real, cai forces 
but only an imaginary occurrence. ^^^^^^• 
Science, it is claimed, shows the forces of nature 
to be a closed circle, acting and reacting by an 
inherent and unalterable necessity. But Science 
is rapidly discovering, or at least gravely sus- 
pecting, the existence of forces, or perhaps we 
should rather say a power, working within and 
without this circle, that is neither mechanical 
nor chemical in the modes of its action. Neither 
the power itself nor its methods of action come 
within the range of the senses, and thus within 
the scope of natural science. It is known to 
exist only through effects. Unless physical 
science can prove itself possessed of an exhaust- 
ive knowledge of every species of force or power 
disclosed through natural phenomena, it has no 
ground for affirming the impossibility of miracles. 
3. Impossibility of proving miracles to have 
occurred. This objection rests on the theory 
that all human knowledge is the pro- objection 

d, r . ri-n 1 . that expe- 

uct ot sense experience. The objec- riencedis- 

tion is sometimes stated in this way: ^^^''^f 

^ miracles. 



20 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

Nothing can be believed to have occurred which 
contradicts our experience of the uniformity of 
nature; miracles contradict this experience and 
are therefore incredible. Sometimes it takes this 
form : A belief in miracles rests on the testimony 
of others ; we have had experience of the falsity 
of human testimony, but of no such changes in 
natural phenomena as are denominated miracles. 
No amount of human testimony, therefore, in 
behalf of miracles can counterbalance the weight 
of experiential evidence against them. To say 
nothing of the indefeasibleness of the psycho- 
logical theory here assumed, viz. that all our 
knowledge is derived from the experiences of 
the senses, suffice it to indicate two defects in 
the reasoning which vitiate its conclusions. Its 
major premise is, that we have experience of 
uniformity in nature, and its minor premise, 
that we also have experience of uncertainty in 
human testimony. But individual experience 
is, of course, too limited to warrant a statement 
of uniformity in nature everywhere and always ; 
it must be corroborated by testimony. But the 
minor premise is that testimony is uncertain. 
The major premise is made to assume ground 
which the minor repudiates. The premises 
thus contradict rather than confirm the conclu- 
sions drawn from them. 

Again, the argument from experience against 
miracles proves too much ; it makes the Apos- 



MIRACLES. 2T 



ties and their associates to have been Argument 
either fools or knaves. Testimony is proves too 

much. 

invalidated by only one of two causes ; 
either that witnesses are self-deceived, or that they 
are intentional deceivers. To suppose the Apos- 
tles and their associates to have been deceived, is 
wholly inconsistent with what we know of them 
from their writings and from what is told of 
them in the Acts. No trace of over credulity 
on their part, or of defective critical judgment, 
is anywhere discernible. And if they were mis- 
led in their judgment of miracles it must have 
been by their Master, Jesus ; a supposition which 
is totally impossible. To suppose them to have 
been intentional deceivers is to suppose them to 
have united and to have persisted in falsehoods 
to which there could have been no rationally 
conceivable inducement, but from which every 
known human motive must have dissuaded 
them ; it is, in short, to suppose a moral mira- 
cle on their part quite as wonderful and unac- 
countable as any miracle to the occurrence of 
which they have testified. 

Section II. — Value of Miracles as Evidence. 

There are two reasons why this value should 
be briefly considered. The first is the exag- 
gerated estimate placed on it by many writers 
in the last century and in the first half of the 



22 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 



present century, who not only make 

Two reasons * -^ ' -^ 

forconsider- miracles to havc been the principal 

ing value of i i i i t i i 

miracles as evidence adduced by Jesus, but to be 
evidence. ^ niost essential part of the evidence 
that should be adduced in our day. The second 
reason is a depreciation of the value by certain 
writers of our time, who not only declare that 
the miracles of Jesus can have no weight as evi- 
dence for us, but insist that the miracles of the 
New Testament are a good reason for doubting 
the trustworthiness of those who wrote them. 
In forming our own estimate of their evidential 
value, it will be well to remember : — 

I. The immediate design of the miracles of 
Jesus was to authenticate Himself as a Divine 
Design of Mcsscnger, the expected Messiah, 

c^e^s^t- ^^^ ^^ ^^ ^'^^^ ^^^y ^^ those who were 
sus wasto addressed, and before whom the mira- 

authenti- . . 

cate Him- clcs wcrc wrought. It was only in a 
vine mL^'" remote way, if at all, — probably not 
senger. at all, — that they were designed to 
authenticate the truth or the authority of His 
message. That they were expected to be 
wrought by the Messiah is evident from the re- 
ply of Jesus to the inquiry of the messengers 
of John the Baptist, '' Art Thou He that should 
come, or look we for another? " — ** Go your way 
and tell John what things ye have seen and 
heard ; how that the blind see, the lame walk, 
the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead 



MIRACLES. 23 



are raised/* No miracles are ascribed to Jesus 
prior to his entrance on the Messianic office. 

2. The miracles of Jesus are so much a part 
of His mission of love and practical benevo- 
lence, and stand in such relation to His Necessary 
teachings in the Gospel narratives, that ^7^*J^ f/^ 
they form a necessary integrant of the lo^e. 
whole. Some of his teachings are intelligible 
only as we remember the miracles that suggested 
them, as, for instance, the discourses following 
the miraculous feeding of the five thousand on 
the eastern slope of the Sea of Galilee, and the 
raising of Lazarus from the dead at Bethany. 

3. To eliminate from the Gospels the miracles 
and all the teachings of Jesus that need the 
miracles to give them force and point. Miracles 
would be to throw the remainder into ^^ec^ssary 

to the con- 

confusion, and make it impossible to sistencyof 

. , . , - - the New 

arrange it into a continuous and con- Testament 
sistent whole. It would also miake it ^^^^a*^^®- 
difficult, if not impossible, to explain the claim 
of the Apostle Paul for himself and the other 
Apostles of the possession of miraculous power 
(Rom. XV. 18, 19; 2 Cor. xii. 12). 

4. Jesus made no display of miracles. He 
evidently set no great value on the possession 
of power to work them. When He had ^ 

^ ^ Jesus made 

conferred miraculous powers on the no display 
seventy, He charged them not to re- 
joice because of their possession of the pow- 



24 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

ers, but *^ because their names were written in 
heaven'' (Luke x. 20). To those benefited by 
the miracles he gave strict injunctions not to re- 
port nor to talk about them to others (Matt. ix. 
30, xii. 16; Mark i. 44, iii. 12, viii. 26; Luke 
V. 14, viii. 56). The three witnesses of the Trans- 
figuration were enjoined to say nothing about it 
during his lifetime (Matt. xvii. 9; Mark ix. 9). 
If the miracles of Jesus, instead of having actu- 
ally occurred, had originated in tradition, or in 
a desire of the writers of the Gospel to glorify 
Him, these writers could hardly have been at so 
much pains to represent Jesus as depreciating 
their importance. 

5. Jesus wrought miracles reluctantly and 
only in obedience to the needs of a class of 
Miracles minds deficient in spiritual insight 

wrought to .'oTi/ri"* N 

meetthe (Matt. xu. 38 ; Mark vni. ii, 12); and 
mhi^^s^defi- He Commended those whose faith 
cientin needed no aid from experience of the 

spiritual ^ 

insight. senses (John xx. 29). 

The evidential value of miracles has been sup- 
posed to be impaired, if not invalidated, by the 
Notinvaii- Ncw Testament recognition of satanic 
^'^aten^ miracles. But it should be remembered 
miracles." ^j^aj- only what is valuable is counter- 
feited, and that a counterfeit always proves the 
existence of something genuine. And it is not 
to be forgotten that miracles, like all other kinds 
of evidence of moral and religious truth, can 



MIRACLES, 25 



prove at their best nothing more than strong 
probability. Moral and religious truth admit 
of no demonstration. Between truth and error 
every one must decide for himself according to 
the light he has. Between a real miracle and a 
counterfeit, and between miracles wrought for 
Divine ends and for satanic purposes, every one 
must evidently discriminate for himself. As 
aids in the discrimination regard must, of course, 
be had both to the character of him through 
whom the miracle is wrought and to the ends 
for which it is wrought. 



26 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES, 



CHAPTER III. 

PROPHECY. 

In considering the nature and weight of the 
evidence from prophecy, we must distinguish 
between the use Jesus made of it and 
in the use the usc aftcrwards made of it by His 
by^j^^^^^^^^ Apostles. In the nature of the case, 
and by His Jesus, as the activc agent in the pro- 
cess of fulfilling prophecy, would dwell 
less on it than did the Apostles in their subse- 
quent reflections. The force of the evidence 
would be much less discernible while the fulfil- 
ment was in progress than when it had been 
completed. In respect to the fulfilment of 
prophecy^ as evidence of the Divine origin of 
Christianity, it should be borne in mind : — 

I. That Jewish history recorded in the Sacred 

Scriptures is prophetic as well as historical. The 

Jewish people were reared for the spe- 

prophecy ciAc purposc of providing a light for 

f^^ 1,*!, all nations, — a light that in its ful- 

through the ' ^ 

Old Testa- ncss was to shiuc in and through a di- 
vinely appointed person, the Messiah. 

1 *'The rule for the relation of prophecy to fulfilment is : 
A prophecy can only be regarded as fulfilled when the whole 
body of truth included in it has attained living realization.'* — 
Orelli's Old Testament Prophecy, § 7. 



PROPHECY. 27 

Every step in Jewish history was prepara- 
tory to His coming. Writers through succes- 
sive centuries foresaw and foretold His coming. 
A golden thread of Messianic prophecy ran 
throughout the sacred writings. The Jewish 
imagination was roused to the use of the most 
glowing imagery in describing the majesty of this 
expected personage. And when Jesus came, the 
public mind, through a combination of various 
causes, was alive with expectation of His com- 
ing. To call attention to the fulfilment of proph- 
ecy as evidence that He had come was both 
natural and necessary. 

2. From the words of Andrew to his brother, 
Simon Peter, after his first interview with Jesus, 
*' We have found the Messias " (John i. inference 
41), and of Philip, on the day following, ^l^Zl^ 
to Nathanael, '* We have found Him of and Philip. 
whom Moses and the prophets did write,*' we 
naturally and necessarily infer that in these 
instances Jesus must have said enough to them 
of prophecy and of His fulfilment of it, to war- 
rant them in pronouncing Him the Messiah. 

3. To the charge that His teaching contra- 
dicted the Scriptures, He replied, '' Think not 
that I am come to destroy the law or Reply of 
the prophets; I am not come to de- Jf^nstothe 

^ ^ charge that 

stroy, but to fulfil. ' (Matt. v. 17.) And His teach- 
when He had read the sixty-first chap- trfdicted 
ter of Isaiah in the public service of the ^^^p*^®- 



28 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES', 

Synagogue at Nazareth, He said to the villagers 
among whom He had been brought up, ** This 
day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears/' 

4. The allusion of Jesus to the miracle or sign 
of Jonas in the whale's belly as emblematic of 
the miracle or sign of His own burial and resur- 
rection (Matt. xii. 40), and His allusion to the 
stone rejected by the builders and becoming 
the head of the corner, are not so much instances 
of evidence adduced from prophecy as they are 
illustrations from Old Testament history. 

5. A complete and comprehensive explana- 
tion of the relation of Jesus to prophecy and 

^ His fulfilment of it was not made by 

Relation of . ' 

Jesns to Him till after His resurrection. But 
not^ex-*^*^ He made it on the afternoon and even- 
^ft^Hi*^ ing of the very day of His resurrec- 
resurrec- tion. And the language employed in 
His explanation seems very clearly to 
imply that He had already before His cruci- 
fixion said enough of prophecy and the necessity 
of His fulfilling it, to have made things clear to 
minds not too much beclouded by self-interest 
and by erroneous conceptions of the nature of the 
kingdom He had come to earth to establish. 

6. When the minds of the Apostles had been 
sufficiently clarified in respect to evidence from 

, prophecy, they made haste to use it 

A.posxries 

use of with frequency and force. The Gos- 

prop ecy ^^^ ^^ Matthcw abounds in citations of 



PROPHECY, 29 



prophecies fulfilled in the life of Jesus; and 
John in his Gospel (xii. 37-41) cites Isaiah 
liii. I, *^Who hath believed our report?" as 
having been fulfilled by the Jews who had re- 
fused to believe in Jesus as the Messiah. The 
use made of prophecy by the Apostles in the 
first days of the Church is one of the most 
notable features of the earlier part of the Acts. 
The remarkable speech of Stephen wholly turns 
on the fulfilment of prophecy by Jesus. The 
Epistle to the Hebrews is simply an elaborate 
argument from fulfilment of Judaism as a grand 
whole of prophecy. 



30 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 



PART 11. 

ORIGINAL EVIDENCES WHICH ARE STILL 
AVAILABLE. 

Some of the evidences employed by Jesus and 

His Apostles carry conviction to honest minds 

to-day, just as they did when first used. 

Two classes "^ ■' ^ ^ 

ofevi- Others having been local, national, 

temporary, could avail in their origi- 
nal form with those only to whom they were 
personally presented. To the first of these 
classes belong the appeals to consciousness ; to 
the second, belong the miracles known to us to 
have been wrought only through the New Tes- 
tament accounts of them. The court of the 
universal consciousness is still open; miracles 
of world-wide significance and universally intel- 
ligible are now addressed by the Church of the 
Living God to all mankind. 



THE APPEAL TO CONSCIOUSNESS. 3 1 



CHAPTER I. 

THE APPEAL TO CONSCIOUSNESS. 

The self-evidencing power of truth is still as 
effective as ever in dealing with unbelief. It is 
even more effective now than when _ 

Response 

relied on by Jesus and His Apostles, ofuniver- 
In fact, it is in pulpit apologetics sciou'^sness 
the most effective method of reaching *5* chris- 

^ tian truth. 

minds whose chief hindrance to be- 
coming Christians is sluggishness and indiffer- 
ence. Christian truth is the voice of God speak- 
ing into the ear of the human soul; it is as 
audibly and as unmistakably Divine as when it 
called Adam to a consciousness of his sin. 

The supposition that Christian truth by its 
long continuance in the world has lost some of 
its original freshness and novelty, and so of its 
power to arrest attention and beget conviction, 
wholly misconceives the essence of truth. Like 
human nature, it remains perennially the same 
through whatever vicissitudes of human society 
it may pass. Doubtless familiarity with the letter 
of truth combined with indifference to the spirit 
of it may fortify against its power of conviction. 
But as a counterbalance to the hardening effect 



32 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

of this familiarity and indifference should be 
borne in mind the influence of Christianity on 
the common consciousness of all peoples who 
live under the light of its teachings. This light, 
even by its reflected shining, irradiates the inner 
nature, wakening into life the better but dormant 
quahties of the soul, intensifying and clarifying 
consciousness itself, and thus imparting a sus- 
ceptibility to the power of Christian truth such 
as neither Jew nor Gentile could have possessed 
when that truth was first proclaimed by Jesus 
and His Apostles. One of the most convincing 
evidences of the Divine origin of Christianity to 
enlightened but unchristian minds in our day is 
the response of consciousness to its moral and 
religious teaching. 



EVIDENCE FROM MIRACLES. 33 



CHAPTER II. 

EVIDENCE FROM MIRACLES. 

The miracles wrought by Jesus and his Apos- 
tles were designed for, and fitted to convince, 
those only for whose benefit they were New Testa- 

, ^ rj-i r T 1 ment mira- 

wrought. They were for Jews only, cies in- 
and for Jews of that day, to facilitate tended for 

J J ^ tneir own 

the planting of Christianity among time, 
them. There is no evidence that they were 
designed to carry conviction either to Gentiles 
or to Jews eighteen hundred years after their 
occyrrence. To attempt in our day to prove 
the Divine origin of Christianity by the mira- 
cles of Jesus is to assume the needless task 
of proving that the miracles were actually 
wrought before we can bring them into court 
to testify. Evidence needing thus to be vouched 
for as trustworthy hazards the credibility of the 
thing to be proved. 

When there shall be wrought miracles of the 
same kind as those appealed to by Jesus, or, in 
fact, of any kind that are equally shown to 
come directly from the Divine hand, they who 
witness them will not greatly err if they shall 
look for other and accompanying evidences of a 

3 



34 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

new dispensation. According to all Biblical his- 
tory, miracles were wrought only to authenti- 
cate messengers who came with new messages. 
Old and familiar truths, by whomsoever reiter- 
ated, have needed, and now need, no corrobo- 
ration. Doubtless many marvellous effects are 
wrought in the human organism simply by a 
strong faith. The power of the mind over the 
body sometimes comes startlingly close to a 
resemblance to Divine power. But to call 
this mental power miraculous is a misuse of 
language. 

But Christianit)^ as it now exists in the world 
has its own accompanying miraculous evidences. 
The higher J^sus announced them as certain to 
miracle. come, and the New Testament expli- 
citly avows them as existing. One species of 
miracle was specially promised by Christ Him- 
self. The Apostles and their associates were 
commissioned and empowered to do the same 
works which He himself had done, and through 
their faith in Him as the risen and glorified 
Lord who had returned to the Father, they were 
to be enabled to do even greater works than He 
had wrought, — greater not in degree but in 
kind. They were to be the instruments in the 
hand of God of working the moral miracles of 
raising human souls from the death of sin to a 
life of righteousness. The moral miracle of the 
resurrection of a soul from spiritual death shows 



EVIDENCE FROM MIRACLES. 35 

forth the glory of God more clearly, if we will 
but see it, than did the bodily resurrection of the 
literally dead. 

To this kind of miraculous evidence the 
Apostle Paul frequently alluded. All miracles 
are, of course, exhibitions of Divine p^^,g 
power. Their entire force as evidence references 

^ to it. 

lies in the assurance given that the 
power of God produces them. The Apostle 
Paul IS accordingly very fond of attributing the 
regenerative process of the Gospel in the soul of 
man directly to the re-creative power of God. 
He makes all to be due to "' the exceeding great- 
ness of God's power to us-ward who believe, 
according to the working of His mighty power 
(His miraculous agency), which he wrought in 
Christ when he raised Him from the dead and 
set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly 
places." With Paul it was the power or miracu- 
lous interposition of God that raised Jesus from 
the dead, the same power that rescued and 
transformed himself from the bitter persecutor 
to the loving advocate; and to the miracle- 
loving Jews, he was content to point to Jesus as 
Himself the '' power of God," or miracle they so 
much craved to see. Among other conspicu- 
ous evidences of Christianity we may therefore 
point to the resurrection of Jesus, the conver- 
sion of the Apostle Paul, and the Person and 
teachings of Jesus. 



36 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 



Section I. — The Resurrection of Jesus. 

The resurrection was the last and the climax 
in the series of the miracles of Jesus. He refers 
Theresur- ^o it as the onc finally decisive evi- 
rectionthe dcucc of His Mcssiahshio (Matt. xii. 

climax in ir \ 

the series 40 ; Lukc Xxiv. AjO\ Johu ii. l8-20). 

miracles of To it abovc all othcrs the Apostles in 
Jesus. ^^ Acts and in their Epistles refer, as 

the ground of their confidence in Christ as Son 
of God and Judge of the world, and the basis 
of their assurance that all His promises would 
be fulfilled. They were at great pains to state 
that as Apostles they were specially appointed 
to be witnesses of the resurrection. 

The resurrection is the one miracle of Jesus 
that must be specially emphasized, and is spe- 
cially available as evidence to-day. The Apos- 
tle Paul makes it to be the fundamental fact 
in Christianity, — an event on the real occur- 
rence of which Christianity must for all time 
rest its claim to be a trustworthy religion. Ac- 
cording to Paul, if it did not occur the Apostles 
were false witnesses, and the religion a fraud. 
Various attempts have been made to explain the 
account of it in the New Testament records in 
some other way than by regarding it as a real 
occurrence. Five theories have been proposed 
to explain it; these have been severally desig- 



EVIDENCE FROM MIRACLES. 37 

nated as the theory of theft, of swoon, of vision, 
of telegram, and of gradual growth from exag- 
gerated statements of the Apostles' belief in the 
immortality of Jesus, or of His survival of death. 

1. The theft theory is too absurd on Theft 
the face of it to require refutation. ^"^^^^^ 

2. The swoon theory of Paulus, that Jesus, 
swooning from pain on the cross, was revived by 
the coolness of the tomb, is more plausi- swoon 
ble than the theft theory ; but evidence ^^^'''■^* 

of actual death seems to have been incontestable. 
The theory is, moreover, wholly irreconcilable 
with the character, teachings, and subsequent 
conduct of the Apostles. The deception im- 
plied in the theory could have been maintained 
only with the connivance, if not actual co-opera- 
tion of Jesus, an impossible admission, to say 
nothing of the impossibility of a successful con- 
tinuance of so stupendous a fraud. 

3. The vision theory advocated by Renan, 
Matthew Arnold, Prof. T. H. Green, and others, 
is still more plausible than the swoon vision 
theory, but is indefensible, {a) The ^^^^^y- 
Apostles had visual and tactual evidence, *' many 
infallible proofs,'* of the real bodily presence of 
Jesus after the resurrection. {U) The Apostles, 
overwhelmed and dismayed by the crucifixion 
of Jesus, were in no state of mind for such vis- 
ions, and were incredulous at the first report of 
His resurrection. {c) The Apostle Paul says 



38 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

he saw Jesus (i Cor. ix. i), and he distinguishes 
between his seeing Jesus and his subsequent 
visions (Acts xxii. 17, 18; 2 Cor. xii. 1-8). 
(d) The hallucination of visions intensifies itself 
in those subject to them till there comes an end 
to it in exhaustion and disappointment, whereas 
with the Apostles Christ's appearances soon 
ceased and ended in settled convictions,^ a com- 
plete transformation of their ideas, aims, and 
expectations, and in arousing them to achieve- 
ments which nothing but the clear-seeing and 
deep-seated faith of cool-headed men can ac- 
count for. 

4. Keim's theory of '^telegram from heaven'' 
is, that the spirit of Jesus from the other world 
Telegram reported itself to the Apostles in a vis- 
theory. ^^|^ bodily form, — a species of materi- 
alization.^ The aim of the theory is to account 

1 Keim says (Vol. VI. p. 356) : '' The visions not only came 
to an end, they even made way for a diametrically opposite 
mental current.'' He concludes an extended critical examina- 
tion of the vision theory with these words: " If there was ac- 
tually an early, an immediate transition from the visions to a 
calm self-possession and to a self poised energy, then the visions 
did not proceed from self-generated visionary over excitement 
and fanatical agitation among the multitude. . . . AH the be- 
fore-mentioned considerations compel us to admit that the 
theory is only an hypothesis which, while it explains some- 
thing, leaves the main fact unexplained, and indeed subordi- 
nates what is historically attested to weak and untenable 
views." 

2 See Keim's Jesus of Nazara (Ransom's translation), Vol. 

VI. pp. 359-364- 



EVIDENCE FROM MIRACLES. 39 

for the transformation of the Apostles from de- 
spair at the crucifixion to the triumphant exal- 
tation they afterwards exhibited ; but it does 
violence to the Gospel narrative, and gives no 
explanation of what became of the real body 
of Jesus. 

5. The gradual growth theory of Martineau 
is, that the Apostles believed so strongly in 
the continued existence of the spirit of 

•r ' 1 Gradual 

Jesus after the crucifixion, and so em- growth 
phasized this belief, that they came in *^®°^^ 
due time to have visions of him as risen, and to 
affirm that they had seen him ; ^ thus giving rise 
to traditions of the resurrection which were in-» 
corporated in the Gospels; — a theory which 
can be maintained only on the assumption that 
the Gospels are neither genuine nor trustworthy. 

The direct evidence of the resurrection of 
Jesus may be summarized as follows: — 

I. The four Gospels detail with minuteness 
the circumstances accompanying*the resurrec- 
tion; the Apostles make it the first whoieNew 
and foremost fact in all their preach- testifies to 
ing, never failing to give it promi- ^^^J^^i^^y 

^* J5 fc» f oftheresur- 

nence, whomsoever they might be rection. 
addressing ; and the conspicuous recognition of 
it in every part of the New Testament, what- 
ever the subject under discussion, bespeaks at 

^ See Martineau's Seat of Authority in Religion, pp. 363- 
370. 



40 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

once the reality of its occurrence and its im- 
portance in the scheme of Christianity. 

2. The real occurrence of the resurrection 
can alone account for the sudden transition 
A osties' through which the Apostles passed 
change of from the disappointment and utter dis- 
theresurrec- may into which the crucifixion had 
*^°^' plunged them into the boldness and 
exultation exhibited by them on the day of 
Pentecost and ever afterwards. 

3. The resurrection was one of the necessary 
steps towards a correction of the erroneous con- 
corrects ccptious SO deeply seated in the Apos- 

Apostles' . 1 J • 1 , • ,1 . r 1 

motions of tlcs mmds respectmg tne nature of the 
dow^" kingdom of Christ. During all their 
Christ. attendance on His personal ministry, 
and even after they were assured of His return 
from the grave, they were dreaming of a tempo- 
ral kingdom and of a reign of earthly magnifi- 
cence. The death on the cross had shattered 
these hopes^ seeing him returned from the 
grave, their hopes revived. It was only after 
Jesus had explained the meaning of both the 
death and the resurrection, that they were en- 
abled to comprehend the kingdom He was to 
found as a reign of righteousness and as the 
conservation of spiritual life among men. The 
resurrection was the midway fact between the 
sacrificial death of Christ and His ascension to 
the throne of the universe. It was the one de- 



EVIDENCE FROM MIRACLES. 4 1 

cisive event which proved at once the Divine 
origin of His religion and its power to save the 
souls of those who believe in it. 

4. The resurrection alone furnishes the key to 
a complete understanding of the New Testa- 
ment as a whole, and to an understand- ^^ey to 
ine of the philosophical consistency theunder- 

^ . r 1 1 . 1 standing of 

of its parts as a system ol theological the New 
and ethical thought. The death of the Testament. 
Son of God without a resurrection would have 
left an unbridged chasm in the theology of the 
New Testament, and the death, as a procuring 
cause in human redemption, without a resur- 
rection, would have been neither effective nor 
intelligible. 

5. If Jesus did not rise from the grave, no 
reasonable account can be given of the exist- 
ence of the Christian Church. With- ^ , . 

Explains 

out the resurrection, it is impossible to existence 

1-1 11 1 , of the 

explain the sudden exchange on the christian 
part of the Apostles' minds of their ^^^^^^ 
long cherished materialistic notions of the Mes- 
sianic kingdom for the spiritual principles 
announced by them on the day of Pentecost. 
But with the resurrection and the repeated 
interviews of the Apostles with their blas- 
ter after that event, of which we have ac- 
counts in the last chapter of the Gospel of 
Luke and the first chapter of the Acts, all 
becomes clear. 



42 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES, 

The resurrection alone can explain the recall- 
ing of the Apostles from the dispersion and 
hiding into which the crucifixion had 

Explains . 

the sub- driven them, and the holding them in 
course of waiting for the outpouring of the Spir- 
tfet^^d" ^^'^ — "^^ Spirit without whose prom- 
theirstrong ised guidance the Church could never 
have been organized. If Christ did 
not rise from the grave, then the Apostles must 
have conspired in hiding His body and in pro- 
claiming the most aimless falsehood ever set 
afloat by man. That men capable of such con- 
spiring, deception, and falsehood, could have 
organized the Christian Church, making it the 
embodiment of the moral and religious princi- 
ples they taught, is a supposition too foolish to 
be thought of So far as any mind can now see, 
had not Jesus Christ risen from the dead all that 
He had said and done and suffered would have 
speedily passed into a fading reminiscence of a 
great and transient light. 

6. The conversion of the Apostle Paul turned 
on the appearance to him of the risen Jesus. 
Conversion Whatever else may have been requi- 
Apostie sit^ ^^ '^^s conversion, the Apostle him- 
Paui. ggif always referred to his arrest on the 

way to Damascus by the risen, personal Jesus 
as the efficient cause of it. So sudden and so 
overwhelmingly surprising was the appearance, 
and so astounded was he by it, that for three 



EVIDENCE FROM MIRACLES. 43 

days he ** neither did eat nor drink/' The resur- 
rection to him was the most absolutely certain 
of facts, — a fact on which he staked the whole 
truth of Christianity, — and by it, he assures us 
in the beginning of his Epistle to the Romans, 
Jesus Christ was declared to be *' the Son of 
God with power." 

7. The resurrection of Jesus was necessary 
as a ground of assurance to the faith of those 
putting their trust in Him. No amount ^esurrec- 
of promise could suffice to win faith in tio^^eces- 

^ ^ sary as a 

one as a Helper in a future world who ground of 
had gone into the grave and had given 
no evidence of His survival of death. Jesus 
was " raised again for our justification,'' and by 
His resurrection our faith in Him is justified. 
His resurrection was necessary to demonstrate 
the reality of a future life, and to assure us of 
our own resurrection to participate in the life 
eternal. 

Section II. — Conversion of the Apostle Paul. 

This naturally follows the resurrection of 
Jesus, and is inseparably connected with it as 
evidence of the divine origin of Chris- Evidential 
tianity. Its evidential value is seen convers^ion^ 
from the following considerations : — °^ ^*^i- 

I. As we have already stated, the conversion 
of the Apostle Paul, in the accounts he gives of 



44 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

it and in the allusions he makes to it, is always 
Effected b declared to have been instrumentally 
appearance effected by the appearance to him of 

of Christ. , .^11. ^1 . 

the once crucified but risen Christ. 

2. Paul had been carefully bred in the Jewish 
religion, and was profoundly versed in its histo- 
Ascrupu- n^> prophecies, and requirements. He 
lous Jew. ^^g most devoutly loyal to his religion, 
practising its requirements with utmost scrupu- 
losity. A fiery zealot in defending it, he resorted 
to the most violent measures in punishment of 
any apostasy from it as from the one and only 
religion of God. 

3. Up to the time of his conversion he was 
convinced that the Christian religion was an 
Determined iuiquitous schcmc, which it would be 
chrfs^^^^^ an acceptable service to God to an- 
tianity nihilatc, and whose adherents he was 
determined, if possible, to exterminate. 

4. There was nothing in the Christian Church 
which could possibly appeal to any selfish mo- 
tive to induce a chanp^e in his estimate 

No appeal ... 

to selfish- of it, or in his temper towards it. On 

ness 

the contrary, its spirit, its interpreta- 
tion of the prophets, its antagonism to Pharisa- 
ism, and its loyalty to the sacrificed Jesus, all 
conspired to repel him, and to stimulate his zeal 
against it. 

5. Identification of himself with Christians, 
even if he had seen anything attractive among 



EVIDENCE FROM MIRACLES. 45 

them, would have necessitated the sacrifice of 
the highest possible prospects that sacrifice of 
could then lie before a young and am- ^*®^®^*^- 
bitious Jew of Paul's ability and attainments. 
He well knew that '' making havoc of the 
Church" was directly in the line of service 
which was sure to procure advancement and 
bring the most coveted prizes of life. 

6. Granting all that can be claimed for natu- 
ral causes in Paul's change of mind, and doubt- 
less not a little was due to them, they Oniysuper- 
cannot account for the suddenness and causes can 
completeness of his transformation. ^^^^^^^ ^^"^ 

A Ms conver- 

The speech of Stephen, we may w^ell sion. 
suppose, had made a strong impression on him. 
Reflections on the reasonableness of Stephen's 
Scripture interpretations, and on the contrast of 
his own spirit with that of the dying martyr, 
could hardly have failed to awaken a conflict of 
feeling, and to create a distrust of the fitness of 
his errand to Damascus. It is not necessary, how- 
ver, to interpret the words, *^ It is hard for thee 
to kick against the pricks,*' as referring to com- 
punctions of conscience and an inw^ard conflict 
which culminated in an ecstatic vision of the 
once crucified but now glorified Jesus.-^ It 

1 The theory that Paul's conversion was due, not to the 
actual appearance to him of the glorified Christ, but to a men- 
tal conflict which had resulted in a state of ecstasy and of 
a self-gendered vision, fails to meet all the conditions stated 



46 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 

better accords with all the circumstances of the 
case to suppose the words to refer to his resist- 
ance to the Divine Providence that 

Transfer 

mationof was leading him onward towards ful- 
filment of the great part assigned him 
in the kingdom of Christ No satisfactory ex- 
planation of the condition of the blinded and 
praying Saul, and his speedy preaching of the 
Jesus whose disciples he had come to Damas- 
cus to slaughter, can be suggested except that 

or implied in the Apostle's own accounts of the occurrence. 
The theory which can claim the advocacy of distinguished 
names, such as Baur, Martineau, and Prof. T. H. Green, however 
anxious to rid the Apostle's conversion of the supernatural, 
has succeeded in securing for the hypothesis the support of 
all the facts narrated by Paul himself. Bernhard Weiss, in his 
*' Life of Christ," very justly says (Vol. III. pp. 412, 413, 
translation) : ^' What renders the assumption of a mere vision 
impossible is the way in which Paul refers to his experience 
near Damascus, as being of an altogether singular character 
(i Cor. ix. I, XV. 8). There is no doubt that Paul had frequent 
visions, and was subject to ecstatic conditions, in which he heard 
heavenly voices and saw himself removed from earth. This 
appearance of Christ, however, he joyfully acknowledges to be 
both the attestation of his position as an apostle (i Cor. ix. i) 
and the cause of his conversion (Gal. i.). . . . All that we can 
say with certainty is, that Paul did not, like the primitive apos- 
tles, behold Jesus in his human body, but in a form of light, and 
that this form he heard speaking to him." Weiss also adds, 
that if, in opposition to this, appeal be made to the Epistle 
to the Galatians (i. 16), which expressly mentions an inward 
revelation, it should be remembered that a " sensuously ob- 
servable appearajice " must have been accompanied by an 
inward revelation. 



EVIDENCE FROM MIRACLES. 47 

which he himself has given, viz. the appearance 
to him of the risen Jesus. 

7. A rehgion that could transform the bitterly- 
persecuting Saul into the loving and self-deny- 
ing Paul, carrying him thereafter onward in 
spite of the deadliest opposition and persecu- 
tion with an ever deepening love for God and 
man, gives strong evidence of being a religion 
of Divine origin, as well as of Divine power. 

8. The Apostle Paul had more than thirty 
years of the most diversified experience in his 
Christian ministry. His personal suf- msendur- 
ferings and spiritual conflicts were in- f^jf^^f ^m 
cessant. It is hardly credible that he othertriais. 
should have been so absolutely certain as he 
was of God's presence and guidance throughout 
the whole, if the religion he preached had not 
had a supernatural origin, and had not been the 
medium of constant communion with the super- 
natural world. 

9. The Divine origin and the superhuman 
power of the Christian religion are seen in its 
influence on the character of the Apos- 

^ Use of his 

tie Paul throughout his long continued Apostolic 
possession and exercise of the Apos- ^°^®^* 
tolic power. From the necessities of the case 
his Apostolic authority was absolute, and in con- 
stant exercise. Unrestrained exercise of any 
kind of power naturally begets arbitrariness 
and tyranny. In Paul the unrestrained exercise 



48 CHRISTIAN E VIDENCES, 

of Apostolic authority begat an almost womanly 
tenderness and gentleness. On occasion, he 
could be as stern and implacable as Justice 
incarnate ; but he was always ready to sacrifice 
himself for others, and his heart overflowed with 
love. 

Section III. — Person and Teachings of Jesus. 

Christianity, whether regarded as a body of 

truth or as spirit and life, originated with Jesus 

Christ. He was it in Himself, and He 

Sinless per- 
fection of taught it in His words. We may, there- 
fore, rightfully look for the stamp of 
its Divinity alike in His Person and in His 
teachings. 

I. His Person. — The New Testament por- 
traiture of Jesus is that of a sinless and ideally 
perfect person. The most opposite virtues unite 
in Him and harmonize. No single virtue over- 
tops and dwarfs others. Every one is duly pro- 
portioned to every other. The united whole 
constitutes the one and only example the world 
has yet seen of a perfect manhood. 

And this is not alone the portraiture of the 
four Gospels. The Acts and the Epistles pre- 
sent it with equal distinctness. The difference 
is only one of method. The Gospels depict 
it in biographical sketches. In the Acts and 
Epistles sinless perfection is dogmatically af- 



EVIDENCE FROM MIRACLES. 49 

firmed. But all alike agree in setting Jesus 
forth as absolutely faultless, — a Person so 
measurelessly apart from the rest of the race 
as to be nothing less than miraculous. 

Whence, then, came to the New Testament 
writers this conception of Jesus ? Are they 
truthful historians, or have they warped history 
to make it conform to a preconceived ideal? If 
we accept the latter alternative, whence came 
the ideal ? To these questions it must be 
replied : — 

1. There is no evidence whatever that the 
Messiah was expected to be a perfect Being. 
And if such had been the expectation 

1 1 r ^ 1111 • Sinless per- 

and the four Gospels had been writ- fection not 
ten to prove that the expectation was theMes^"^ 
realized, they would have been very siahbythe 

•' -' Jews. 

different documents from those which 
we have. Biographies written to prove a per- 
fect character would have inevitably betrayed 
their purpose, whereas in the Gospels the per- 
fect character of Jesus is only incidentally, 
though clearly, disclosed. 

2. If we suppose sinless perfection to have 
been an afterthought with the first Christians, it 
is hardly possible that this origin of it ^^^ ^^ 
should not be discernible in the mode ^fter- 

r • T 1 r r r^^ - ^ thought of 

of its adjustment to the facts of Christ s the first 
life. But it never is introduced as some- ^^^^*^^^^- 
thing to be inferred from, or to be regarded as 

4 



50 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

explanatory of, what He had said, or Himself 
was ; it always comes out as an inevitable reve- 
lation of His inner nature. 

3. No explanation of the origin of the New 
Testament idea of the sinless perfection of Jesus 
Not an in- cau Stand the test of criticism except 
the Ap^3°^ that which supposes it to have been 
ties. derived from the life of Jesus Himself. 
Artists, literary as well as others, are helpless 
without models. It is hardly conceivable that a 
single Evangelist could, out of his own imagina- 
tion, have depicted the perfect Jesus. But that 
the writers of the four Gospels, to say nothing 
of the rest of the New Testament authors, should 
have so completely agreed in their pictures of 
Jesus without a real original, is to suppose 
nothing less than a literary miracle. The truth 
is, the Synoptists recorded what they themselves 
had seen, and the traditions of the whole Church. 
The Apostle John formed his entire Gospel on 
his own knowledge of Jesus, derived from the 
most intimate of personal relations with Him. 

4. The sinless perfection and matchless moral 
dignity of Jesus become the more apparent and 
More won- woudcrful whcu we take into account 
f^^^r"^ two considerations. The first is, His 

two con- ' 

siderations. humblc birth, His occupation, and His 
entire social environment. Nothing in these can 
in any way account for what He evidently was. 
He was the product of more than natural causes. 



EVIDEATCE FROM MIRACLES. 5 I 

In the Divine economy second causes are never 
permitted to hide the efficient Cause that stands 
behind them. The second consideration is, that 
Jesus possessed a true human nature derived 
from His mother. In that nature '* He was 
tempted in all points like as we are." It was 
a nature susceptible of temptations in the wilder- 
ness. And yet He was unapproachably superior 
to the acknowledged religious leaders of His 
own time and of all time. Once for all, He 
was a realization of the ideally perfect man; 
He was a living Miracle. - 

5. Jesus apparently was not conscious of 
His Messiahship till at, or after, His baptism. 
This consciousness, however, was after- ^ 

' ' Conscious- 

wards explicitly avowed, and sinlessness ^ess of 

claimed by Him (John viii. 46). No ship after 

consistent explanation of this claim and ^^p*^^'^ 

avowal is possible except on the ground of their 

reality 

6. An absolutely sinless character in the 
Founder of Christianity may easily be shown, 
both theologically and ethically, to 

, - . ^ , Sinlessness 

have been necessary to its complete- of jesus 
ness as a system of rehgion. Theologi- tw^ 
cally the Christian religion becomes caiiyand 

. , ethically. 

effective in accomplishing its end only 
through faith in Jesus as a faultless Sufferer in 
our behalf. Faith in one as a helper whose suf- 
ferings might have been suspected of being due 



52 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

to his own faults would, of course, have been 
abortive. Ethically, Jesus is the example whom 
we are always to follow. Only a perfect being 
can safely be presented to men as their ideal 
and pattern. These theological and ethical ne- 
cessities, however, are never so much as hinted 
at by New Testament writers, and cannot, there- 
fore, be. referred to as explaining their portraiture 
of Jesus as perfect. It has been only through 
a progressive and philosophico-theological expo- 
sition of Christianity as a whole, that the fitness 
and necessity of a perfect character in Jesus have 
become fully apparent.^ 

II. The Teachings of Jesus, — In appealing to 
the teachings of Jesus as evidence of the super- 
Teachings natural origin of His religion, it is not 
uindxed claimed that nothing taught by Him 
with error, j^^^j ncvcr been taught by any one else. 
It is not difficult to parallel many of His ethical 
sayings by citations from Old Testament proph- 
ets, from Apocryphal and Rabbinical waitings, 
and even from heathen writings like those of Plato, 
Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. What 

1 " All other religious men go into the presence of God with 
a cry for pardon. But he who dies upon the cross never sobs 
out, * Father, forgive me.' Theology may be right in arguing 
from this to the highest holiness. The absence of all confes- 
sion may imply a Divine Humanity; it is fatal to a human 
humanity." — Columbia College Lectures, Primary Convic- 
tions, p. 83. By William Alexander, D. D., Bishop of Derry 
and Raphoe. 



EVIDENCE FROM MIRACLES, 53 

we can and do claim is, that Jesus taught a sys- 
tem of religion and ethics unequalled by any 
religion before His time or since, and that in it 
He taught truth unmixed with error. On this 
truth stands the legible stamp of its Divine 
origin. If the truth is from a superhuman 
source, so also is the religion that embodies 
and illustrates it. Notice : — 

1. The absolute originality of the two most 
elementary and yet most comprehensive prin- 
ciples in the whole body of Christian originality 
truth, — the Fatherhood of God and of the two 

most com- 

the brotherhood of man. Not a peo- prehensive 

, 1 . , . , - , truths of 

pie on earth recognized either of these Christian- 
principles in the Christian sense of ity ^*^' 
when first they were uttered by Jesus. To the 
Jew every man not of his race was a dog, to 
the Greek the foreigner was a barbarian, and to 
the Roman every alien was fit only for Roman 
enslavement. To-day among all enlightened 
peoples the Fatherhood of God and brother- 
hood of man are the commonplaces of the 
Christian religion and accepted as self-evident. 

2. No well supported proof can be adduced 
of a natural and human origin of other more 
distinctive principles of Christianity, other dis- 
Strikinpf passae^es can be slathered tinctive 

^ ^ ^ ^ principles 

from writings of the Maccabean pe- taught by 
riod, and from the so called Apoca- "^* 
lyptic and Wisdom literature of the age imme- 



54 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

diately preceding the birth of Jesus, and these 
may have sustained to His teachings a relation 
not unHke that of the reddening dawn to the 
rising sun ; but there is not a fragment of evi- 
dence that He had even a hearsay acquaintance 
with these, much less that He read them and 
borrowed from them. Among people of His 
rank and social level, religious life and thinking 
were of the dreariest. His teaching was to all 
classes alike astonishing and unaccountable. 
^^ How knoweth this man letters, having never 
learned?" was the common inquiry. If He 
was familiar with the Apocalyptic and Wisdom 
literature of His time, or with earlier Stoical 
writers, it is not credible that some among His 
hearers should not also have been familiar with 
them, and, knowing His indebtedness, should 
not have exposed Him as a plagiarist. 

3. Let the simple facts speak. A peasant-born 
Jew, bred and toiling as a mechanic, acquainted 
His teach- ^'^^ nonc Other of the literatures of the 
ingshave world than the Jewish Scriptures, at 

stood the 

test of thirty years of age gives to the world 
^^®^* a body of moral and religious truth 

which more than eighteen centuries of severest 
criticism and practical testing have utterly 
failed to invalidate, or in any degree to dis- 
credit, and which now, more than ever, is 
proving its fitness to be the one universal reli- 
gion. A religion standing thus apart from, and 



E VIDE NCR FROM MIR A CLES. 5 5 

superior to, all others, gives evidence, if evi- 
dence can be given, of having originated with 
the Supreme Mind of the universe, and of being 
fitted to fulfil the ultimate end for which the 
universe exists. 

4. The final commission of Jesus to the Apos- 
tles, to evangelize the whole world, implies on 
His part an assured consciousness of „ . _ 

^ ^ He impart- 

having given to them truth, absolute, ed absolute 
immutable, and unqualified. What He 
was conscious of, history is vindicating with an 
increasing distinctness. 

5. Nothing in the Apostolic development of 
Christianity, or in the subsequent unfolding of 
the Apostles' exposition of it, has u^jj^g^if 
added to, or withdrawn from, the sub- the Divine 
stance of what was given in the person, tion of 

in the deeds, and in the oral instruc- *^*^" 
tions of Jesus. He Himself was all that He 
required His disciples to become, — was the 
Divine incarnated. The development of Chris- 
tianity has been simply a disclosure of the 
hidden nature of the Divine-human Jesus. 



56 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES, 



CHAPTER III. 

EVIDENCE FROM PROPHECY. 

In treating of Prophecy under Part First, we 
saw that Jesus declared Himself to have come 
Fulfilments ^^^^ ^^ world to fulfil both the Law 
of prophecy and the Prophets, and, on a given oc- 

recorded in 

New Testa- casion at Nazareth He assured His 
ment. fellow townsmcu that one very striking 

prophecy of Isaiah was then and there being 
fulfilled; and after His resurrection. He imme- 
diately pointed out to His disciples that His 
life and death had been necessary to fulfil what 
the Prophets had written concerning Him. On 
this teaching of their Master, the Apostles and 
their associates at once proceeded to enlarge. 
They represented Judaism as foretelling, alike in 
its institutions and in its Sacred Scriptures, the 
coming of a religion far better than itself, and, 
especially, the coming of One anointed of God, 
who should build up the new religion out of 
the old. Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms 
are all appealed to as prophesying of this new 
religion audits Founder; and their prophecies 
are claimed to have been fulfilled in the person 
and the work of Jesus. In fact, the New Tes- 
tament viewed in its relation to the Old Testa- 



EVIDENCE FROM PROPHECY. 57 

ment is throughout a detailed fulfilment of the 
prophecies and predictions found in the Old 
Testament Scriptures. . 

And yet the New Testament contains only 
specimens ^ of the prophecies and predictions 
that were fulfilled in the person, the prophecies 
death, and the resurrection of Jesus. 'otheApos- 
Such only are mentioned as the spe- *ies. 
cific topic treated of by each speaker or writer 
called for. Intimations, however, are not want- 
ing that others might be cited ; and in the light 
of those given, it is not difficult to interpret the 
others. Under this light writers subsequent to 
the Apostles proceeded to cite other fulfilments. 
Examples of this are found in the Epistle of 
Barnabas, written according to Delitzsch be- 
tween the years 70 and 120; in Justin Martyr's 
Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, written between 
the years 140 and 148, and in St. Augustine's 
** City of God," written near the beginning of 
the fifth century. With these and many other 
writers of the earlier centuries, predominance 
among the evidences of the Divine origin of 

1 '*The New Testament references to Old Testament proph- 
ecies are limited, rather accidentally than designedly, by the 
occasion afforded in the Gospel history and the apostolic trains 
of thought. Hence it has come to pass that many Messianic 
passages of prime importance have remained unnoticed, e. g. 
Isaiah ix. 6, 7; Jer. xxiii. 5, 6; Zech. vi. 12, 13." Delitzsch, 
Messianic Prophecies, § 10. Compare Riehm's Messianic 
Prophecy, Part HI., p. 222 of Muirhead's translation. 



58 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

Christianity was given to Prophecy. And it 
was not alone to Messianic prophecies that those 
who wrote for Gentile readers gave attention. 
They dwelt also on the large range of prophe- 
cies relating to foreign peoples, and to the Jew- 
ish nation and to God's dealing with it ; lines of 
argument still available, and, when rightly con- 
sidered, not easily set aside. Thus we have 
fulfilments of prophecies against Assyria and 
Babylon and Moab ; and of the special predic- 
tions of disaster to the kingdoms of Israel and 
Syria who had formed an alliance against Judah ; 
and of the overthrow of the army of Sennache- 
rib, King of Assyria, when laying siege to Je- 
rusalem. But as evidence of the Divine origin 
of Christianity the Messianic prophecies are 
more in point, and the fulfilment of these is 
more demonstrably clear. 

Various causes have contributed to the de- 
preciation of the value of Prophecy as one of 
Deprecia- the Christian evidences. The earliest 
Prophecy ^^<^ most activc of these was the un- 
throughun- critical habit of finding 'fulfilments in 

critical ^ 

treatment, support of prcconceivcd systems of 
thought, a treatment of the Sacred Scriptures 
which Biblical criticism has not been slow in 
exposing as an abuse of them. Rationalism, 
availing itself of Biblical criticism and adopting a 
rigid grammatico-historical method of interpre- 
tation, has been prompt in its endeavors to show 



EVIDENCE FROM PROPHECY. 59 

that prophecies, Messianic and all alike, afford 
no evidence of a supernatural origin, but may 
be otherwise and easily accounted for. Thus 
some of the prophecies, it says, are no more 
than the forecasting of political or ethical sa- 
gacity ; certain Messianic predictions, when com- 
pared with their fulfilment in Christ, are declared 
to be only fortunate coincidences between what 
had been uttered originally of Jewish function- 
aries and what had occurred in the personal 
history of Jesus; and when all other meth- 
ods fail of evading the force of the argument 
from the fulfilment of Messianic prediction in 
the life and death and resurrection of Christ, 
rationalism does not hesitate to affirm Attempt of 
that the predictions must have been ^'t^deny 
written after the occurrence of the Prophecy, 
events predicted. But Biblical learning and crit- 
icism advance with an ever widening knowledge 
of Jewish history and with an ever deepening 
insight into the nature of the Messianic proph- 
ecies, and of their connection with the whole 
of the Jewish religion. The more sober critics 
are fast coming to see with equal distinctness 
the mistake of theorists who would find in the 
fulfilment of prophecies a justification of pre- 
conceived notions, and the far greater mistake of 
rationalists who refuse to see traces of anything 
supernatural in any of the Old Testament proph- 
ets. The truth is, the more thoroughly the 



60 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES, 

Jewish religion is studied and its Sacred Scrip- 
tures are understood, the clearer becomes the 
evidence that throughout, from the beginning 
onward, there were an ever growing prom- 
ise and expectancy of a coming of something 
better than had at any time been attained or 
attainable, and that the introduction and con- 
summation of all should be through the coming 
of the Priest and King anointed of God to found 
a Kingdom of Righteousness that should know 
no end. 

The argument in support of the Divine origin 
of Christianity from the fulfilment of the Messi- 
Prophecy ^^^^ propliccics was ncvcr more con- 
as evidence yincins: to inrenuous minds than it is 

more con- ^ ^ ^ 

vincingto- to-day. Biblical criticism, so confi- 
ever be^ dently relied on to destroy the argu- 
fore. ment from prophecy, has only served 

to show its impregnability. Precedence has 
been given it over any other kind of proof. 
Miracles of power, of whatever description, can 
be effective and convincing to those only on 
whom, or before whom, they are wrought. Their 
evidence is necessarily both local and transient; 
and their effectiveness as evidence can be added 
to neither by repetition nor by multiplication. 
Too many of them would weaken it. As every- 
day occurrences, they would cease to be evi- 
dence at all. But prophecies — miracles of 
knowledge — are limited neither to place nor 



EVIDENCE FROM PROPHECY. 6 1 

to time. Once uttered and fulfilled, the voice 
goes sounding along the centuries, ever gaining 
in articulateness and emphasis wherever the light 
of Christianity is shining. Fulfilment gives to 
the words of the prophets the character of living 
witnesses. The oftener any single prophecy is 
fulfilled, — and fulfilments may be repeated, — 
the oftener the testimony of the witnesses is 
heard; and the more there are of prophecies 
fulfilled, the greater the number of the witnesses 
to testify. The whole Christian world now tes- 
tifies to the truth of the predictions of the old 
prophets of Judea. 

In appealing, however, to Old Testament 
prophecy as Christian evidence, regard must 
be had to the manifest distinction Distinction 
between '' type " ^ and *' prophecy,'' between 

-^ ^ i- r J y "type "and 

and between prophecy in the broader "proph- 
sense of outline of the future and ^^^' 
prophecy in the narrower sense of prediction 

1 *'By type we understand the inadequate presentation of a 
divine idea which is to be more perfectly realized afterwards. 
The Spirit of God not only reveals Himself in definite words 
which He suggests to consecrated seers; He also rules in his- 
tory, shaping it with significant reference to the future. ... As 
to the type, the rule is that it is known as such only by the 
appearance of the antitype, in which it is fulfilled, except where 
it has been explained in its prefigurative significance by pro- 
phetic speech. It is fulfilled when the idea imperfectly hinted in 
it has found its adequate exposition in realization." — Orelli's 
Old Testament Prophecy, §§ 5 and 7, pp. ^i*]^ 38, and 54. See 
also Briggs's Messianic Prophecies, § 19. 



62 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES, 

of persons and events; and, more than all, to 
the difference between the major function of the 
prophets as preachers of righteousness and their 
minor function as seers and proclaimers of the 
future. These distinctions bear on the question 
of proof as derived from prophecy. Thus the 
Jews were an elect people chosen of God from 
among the nations, not for their own sakes, but 
for the accomplishment of Divine ends. The 
ends were moral and religious, and were attain- 
able only in an indeterminate future, and by 
means not then intelligible. Of these ends, 
under one aspect or another of them, every 
office and every office-holder among the Jews 
was a type, and to them every rite, ceremony, 
and ordinance of their religion symbolically 
pointed. "Their whole life was one of awaiting 
expectancy, — of eager longing for the coming 
of something better. For the attainment of 
the better, obedience was inexorably required 
to the moral statutes under which Moses had 
placed them at the beginning of their national 
life. Enforcement of moral obligation, of obe- 
dience to the Sovereign Will of the infinitely 
Holy One whose chosen people they were, was 
the one great function of their prophets. They 
were the recognized preachers of righteousness. 
In performing this function, they necessarily 
denounced national iniquities, and forewarned 
of national judgments which were sure to ensue. 



EVIDENCE FROM PROPHECY. 63 

From contemplation of national perversity and 
the national ruin induced by it, the prophetic 
mind turned naturally to the promises of the 
great future which had been given to Abraham 
and Moses and David. Within these promises 
the Omniscient Spirit that guided them — the 
*' Spirit of Christ " Peter called it — opened 
their eyes to see what they have prophetically 
depicted. On the dark background of threat- 
ened judgments they painted in glowing colors 
their pictures of an ultimate endless reign of 
righteousness and peace. Out from amid the 
gloom of impending calamities they saw and 
pictured the righteous King, Founder of the 
endless kingdom. 

In adducing fulfilment of Prophecy, further- 
more, as Christian evidence, caution is to be 
exercised not to fall into the mistake 

c , • . r y , ' . . Cautions 

01 trymg to nnd too mmute a meanmg against too 
in all the symbolical imagery in which ^""^eta^" 
the prophecy is couched. Against this tionsof 

. 1 . , , , ^, Prophecy. 

two considerations should warn us. The 
first is a lack of information on our part for such 
interpretation. Each prophet's imagery and 
phraseology were determined by his individual 
endowments and experiences, and reflected his 
own time and surroundings. Of all these, our 
knowledge is too meagre to warrant minuteness 
of interpretation, even if it be admitted that 
minuteness of meaning was in the prophet's 



64 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. ' 

mind. A second consideration is, that the sym- 
boHcal imagery and incidental language of a 
prophecy are not so essential to its meaning as 
to require, or even to admit of, a minutely exact 
interpretation. To insist on such interpretation 
is no more reasonable than to insist on finding 
doctrinal meaning in the mere drapery of the 
New Testament parables. In using parables, 
Jesus had a single and definite purpose in each 
of them. Except as drapery, or setting for that 
purpose or end, the drapery had no meaning. 
In like manner, the symbolical imagery and in- 
cidental terms of the Old Testament seer, except 
as drapery or setting for the single event or per- 
son he was foretelling, were without significance. 
The various and often conflicting meanings that 
persons of vivid fancies have thought themselves 
justified in extracting from prophetic imagery, 
have brought the whole argument from prophecy 
into unmerited disrepute. They throw distrust on 
the prophets by trying to make out a great deal 
more than was pretended to be seen. The New 
Testament, in its citations of fulfilled prophecy, 
affords no illustration of this misuse of them. 

In using the prophetic argument, it is also not 
to be forgotten that prophecies, especially the 
Messianic Mcssianic, did not occur as sporadic 
norspo"!'^' and isolated outbursts of the prophetic 
radic, buta spirit. They were a connected series 

connected ^ , ^ ^ .11 rr^i 

series. Constituting an organic whole. They 



EVIDENCE FROM PROPHECY. 65 

are a clearly definable integer of Jewish his- 
tory, and form, in fact, the core of it. They 
reveal as nothing else does, or can, the Divine 
purpose in rearing and training the Jewish 
people, and the connection of that purpose 
with the broader and eternal purpose of hu- 
man redemption.^ Towards a fulfilment of the 
broader and eternal purpose, every prophet 
was made to contribute his quota, and his quota 
was determined by his position in the prophetic 
line. Select whatever item we may of his Messi- 
anic predictions, its full meaning becomes clear 
only as we look at it in the light of the whole 
series of Messianic prophecies. The argument 
from prophecy in Christian evidences, like the 
argument from design in Natural Theology, 
becomes conclusive only when the instance of 
design selected to reason from is seen to be 
simply a unit of a complex but unified whole. 

1 ^'When we consider that the prophets were linked in a 
chain, and that their predictions are combined in a system, — 
an organic whole which no individual prophet could possibly 
comprehend, which now stands before the scholarly world in 
marvellous unity and variety as the object of the study of the 
ages of the past, which absorbs the energies of the present, and 
which arches the future even to the end of the world, — we are 
forced to the conviction that the one Master of the Hebrew 
prophets was the Spirit of God, and that the organic system of 
prophecy is a product of the mind and will of God." — Briggs's 
Messianic Prophecies, § 16, p. 42. Compare Riehm's Messi- 
anic Prophecy, Part II., and Orelli's Old Testament Proph' 
ecy, § 3- 

5 



66 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES, 

As in the material universe, the countless adjust- 
ments of parts to one another and to the unified 
whole proclaim unmistakably a foreseeing and 
presiding Intelligence, so in the great whole of 
Messianic prophecies, the manifold adjustments 
of single predictions to one another and to 
the unified whole proclaim, with equal or with 
greater distinctness, a foreseeing and foretelling 
Divine Intelligence ; and as in the material uni- 
verse it is impossible to resist the conviction 
that within the whole has always dwelt the 
Supreme Directive Mind, so in Hebrew proph- 
ecy it is equally impossible to resist the convic- 
tion that within the whole the Supreme Mind 
has always presided and directed. God is 
equally immanent in human history and in the 
material universe. 

Nor does it invalidate the foregoing to admit 
that there are prophecies in the Old Testament 
Prophecies which havc not been fulfilled, and now 
no^^been^^^ ncvcr Can be, the nations to whom they 
fulfilled. referred having passed utterly away.^ 
When national or individual sins, against which 
penal woes were announced to be forthcoming, 
ceased, and were followed by repentance, as 

1 " The fulfilment of prophecies depends, of course, as a rule, 
upon further conditions, expressed or tacitly assumed, which 
belong to the sphere of human freedom, and hence many a 
prophecy, though announced in the Spirit of God, may remain 
unfulfilled." — Riehm's Messianic Prophecy, Part III., p. 22j 
(Muirhead*s translation). 



EVIDENCE FROM PROPHECY. 67 

was the case with Nineveh and the prediction 
of Jonah, and with Hezekiah and the prediction 
of Micah, (see Jeremiah xxvi. 18, 19, Micah 
iii. 12, and 2 Chron. xxxii. 26,) the predictions 
of course became inoperative. Other Old Tes- 
tament prophecies may not for Hke reasons — 
reasons not recorded as were the prophecies — 
have been fulfilled. In prophecy, furthermore, 
as in universal nature, provision is vastly in ex- 
cess of the supply needed for specific ends. 
Nature is intent on perpetuating every species 
of life existing within her domain. To this 
end she has provided every plant, tree, and 
animal with self-perpetuating seeds; but the 
seeds are immeasurably in excess of all that 
are needed for reproduction. Prophecies were 
doubtless in excess of the number that were 
either expected or intended to be explicitly 
fulfilled. 

The prophetic element is not alone found in 
the Old Testament. The New Testament also 
had its prophecies and its predictions. 
Jesus not only predicted the destruc- tament 
tion of Jerusalem, but many things ^°^ ^^^^^' 
respecting the kingdom he had come to earth 
to establish. The entire New Testament abounds 
also in predictions of His second coming. Its 
prophetic warnings against apostasy and against 
recreancy in the performance of duty, throw 
floods of light on what has already transpired, 



68 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

or is now transpiring, in the history of the 
Church. In fact, the whole New Testament 
was, when composed, quite as much a forecast 
of the future as it was a record of what had 
passed, or was then passing. It is largely by 
its prophetic character that it to-day throws so 
much light on personal duty, and becomes to 
every one who devoutly consults it the source 
at once of illuminative truth and of quickening 
energy. 

Against the misuse of Scripture prophecies 

now awaiting fulfilment, it is hardly possible to 

protest too earnestly. They can have 

Misuse of -^ -^ ^ 

Scripture for US no bearing whatever as evidence 
rop ecies. ^^ ^^ question of the Divine origin of 
the Christian religion, and they are sadly mis- 
used when attempts are made to forestall their 
fulfilments by showing just what these must be,^ 
when meanings are put into them in support of 
preconceived theories, and when they are inter- 
preted as telling us the how, the when, and the 

1 "The great symbols of Hebrew predictive prophecy re- 
mained riddles of comfort and warning — all the more dread 
from their profound and awful mystery — until they were re- 
solved by the events predicted. The first advent is the first 
great resolver of all Old Testament prophecy. Jesus opened 
the understanding of His Apostles that they might understand 
the Scriptures. The second advent will give the key to New 
Testament prophecy. It is the Lamb that has been slain, the 
everlasting and blessed One who alone opens the sealed book, 
solves the riddles of time, and resolves the symbols of proph- 
ecy." — Briggs's Messianic Prophecies, § 19, p. 49. 



EVIDENCE FROM PROPHECY. 69 

where of the occurrence of certain events fore- 
told and definitely expected. Of all wastes of 
time and misuses of Scripture, few, if any, have 
proved so radically mischievous as attempts to 
interpret unfulfilled prophecy. Strange that 
more than two thousand years of failure in such 
attempts do not deter men from persisting in 
them. Only when their meaning has been 
" writ large '' in the actual occurrences of history 
is that meaning fully intelligible, and only then 
is it available as proof that Christianity is from 
God. 



70 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES, 



CHAPTER IV. 

EVIDENCE FROM CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 

This, in its initial stage, is not unlike the evi- 
dence relied on when there is simply an appeal 

Difference ^O COnScioUSneSS, but in its fulness, it in- 
between eludes much more. In the first, there 

evidence 

from con- is merely a response elicited to the 

sciousness i r • i • r ^ 

and from self-evidencmg power of truth, — a re- 
experience. gpQ^se which is morc or less immedi- 
ate on presentation of truth ; the second is a 
practical testing of truth by honestly accepting 
it and sincerely complying with its requirements, 
a testing that may be more or less progressive 
and protracted. The validity of the proof from 
experience is made apparent by a variety of 
considerations : — 

I. A religion to get itself established among 
men must satisfy some at least of the wants of 
the human soul. A religion which is to win for 
itself the confidence of men as of Divine origin 
in a sense that no other is, and as having exclu- 
sive authority from God, must show itself equal 
to a supply of every existing, and of every de- 
veloped, need of every human soul. The Chris- 
tian finds that no want of his soul, however 
deep, or subtile, or urgent, or progressively ca- 



E VIDENCE FROM CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 7 1 
pacious, is unprovided for in Christian- ^ 

^ ' ^ Every need 

ity. The more completely and the ofthesoui 

, - . . . , provided 

longer he tests its provisions, the more forinCkris- 
profoundly he becomes convinced of *^^*y* 
its Divine origin and authority. There are reli- 
gions, gross in their ideas of God and burdened 
with superstitions and puerile conceptions of the 
duties and destinies of man, whose adherents 
accept them as divine because they think their 
souls* wants satisfied. And doubtless the more 
immediate and superficial of these — the allay- 
ing of their fears of the future, and the assur- 
ance of the favor of their deities — are satisfied. 
But for a thousand other latent needs of which 
they are unaware, no provision is made. 

Christianity, on the other hand, is a religion that 
not only allays fears and reconciles with Deity, but 
takes every one who accepts it under its imme- 
diate tuition, and proceeds at once to enlighten 
him and to train him to a standard of personal 
perfection as found in the Author of Chris- 
tianity; and, in the light of that perfection, it 
discloses to him his own deficiencies and deeper 
needs. It surrounds him with every needed 
inducement to advance in self-improvement and 
proffers all needed aid in his striving for it. To 
quicken him in his striving, it brings him into 
fellowship with the Supreme Being, with the 
Son of God, and with the select spirits of the 
universe. The farther he advances and the more 



72 CHRISTIAN E VIDENCES. 

completely he avails himself of the resources of 
his religion, the more clearly he discovers that 
no emergency arises, and no want of his soul 
discloses itself, for which his religion has not 
provided, and for which it does not furnish 
immediate and ample relief. Its requirements 
and its promises unite in filling him with the 
profoundest satisfaction. In his experience the 
Christian finds an inward and convincing proof 
of the Divine origin of his holy religion. 

2. In becoming a Christian one comes into 
direct personal communion with Christ, the 
The Chris- Author of Christianity, and in Christ, 
into direct commuucs witli *^ the Father of the 
personal spirits of all flcsh." The essence of 

communion ^ 

with Deity, evcry religion must consist in an inter- 
change of thought and will (communion) be- 
tween its deity and his worshipper. The essence 
of Christianity pre-eminently consists in this in- 
terchange; only in Christianity the Deity com- 
muned with is a real personal Being. What a 
religion says to man and requires of him is a 
message from the deity the religion is supposed 
to represent. Man's acceptance of the rehgion 
and compliance with its requirements is his re- 
sponse to its deity. There is an interchange of 
thought and will. In Christianity Christ speaks 
directly to us, and invites to a personal relation- 
ship with Himself, and thus with the Eternal 
Father. His words are revelations of His own 



EVIDENCE FROM CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 73 

nature, — statements of realities, — and thus are 
truths. In practically testing these truths the 
Christian comes into immediate personal rela- 
tionship with Him who spoke them, — com- 
munes with Him. In this communion the 
Christian has direct and immediate evidence of 
Christ's personal existence, and thus, of the 
existence of the Eternal Father. The evidence 
of an actual interchange of thought and feeling 
with a real personal Being is not unlike in kind 
that of an actual interchange between fellow 
beings. In his experiential testing of Christian 
truths, — of the words of Christ, — the Chris- 
tian finds within himself evidence of both the 
Divine origin and the Divine authority of his 
Holy Religion. 

3. The Christian finds in his consciousness a 
certification to the Divine origin of his Chris- 
tian convictions, emotions, and aspira- christian 
tions; and in these, the product of his springs 
religion, he also finds certification to ^^^^^^^ 
its Divine origin. To have become a oftheiove 

^t . . . , . 1 ^^ Jesus 

Christian is to have been born into the Christ. 
Christian consciousness; just as to have been 
born a human being is to participate in the con- 
sciousness common to mankind. In conscious- 
ness subject and object must always coexist. 
Without an object clearly perceived to be dis- 
tinct from the subject that perceives it, con- 
sciousness can never exist. The object thus 



74 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES, 

necessarily conditioning the existence of natural 
consciousness may be a mere sensation, or it 
may be a thought, an emotion, a purpose ; what- 
ever it may be, its origin and its nature are easily 
discerned. And this is true of objects that ne- 
cessarily condition the existence of the Christian 
consciousness ; their nature and origin are easily 
discerned. The Christian is clearly conscious of 
the origin of his distinctively Christian convic- 
tions and emotions, and of his Christian aspira- 
tions. Of nothing is he more fully assured than 
that these deepest and most sacred of the Chris- 
tian contents of his heart have sprung into being 
only through knowing and loving Jesus Christ, 
the Author of the Christian religion. 

4. The experience of the Christian so far as 
relates to the moral and religious teachings of 
Present ex- the New Testament is not unlike that 

perience of 1 1 • 1 1 1 1 • 

the Chris- through whicli the speakers and writers 
like that^of ^^ ^^e New Testament must themselves 
the writers havc oasscd. Thcsc Speakers and writ- 

of the New ^ . ... 

Testament, ers, turning over in their minds, under 
the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the facts of 
Christ's Person and works and the words He 
spoke, experienced what they said and wrote. 
The believer who now devoutly studies their 
teachings, guided by the same Spirit that was 
in them, reproduces in himself their experience. 
And as in their experience they were sure they 
knew and expressed the mind of Christ, and 



EVIDENCE FROM CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE, 75 

thus the mind and will of God, so we, in the 
reproduction of their experience in ourselves, 
have a like assurance that in the New Testa- 
ment teaching we have the mind of Christ, — 
a revelation of the mind and will of God. Nor 
is this a fanciful assurance. The convictions, 
emotions, and aspirations of the Christian ex- 
perience bear the unmistakable stamp of their 
origin. Divinely originated, they breed in us a 
desire for the Divine presence. The Spirit that 
begat them bears witness with our spirits of their 
origin. And they are both begotten and kept 
alive and vigorous only by means of Christian 
truth as recorded in the New Testament. With- 
out reliance on the trustworthiness of that record, 
experience may begin in illusions, and, sooner 
or later, will end in fanaticism. In and through 
the experience of this power of Christian truth, 
we have an inward and convincing proof of the 
Divine origin of the Christian religion. 

5. Christian experience proves the Divine ori- 
gin not only of the teachings of Christianity, 
but also of the Christian religion as a 

° Christian 

whole. It not only teaches man what experience 
he should believe and do, but, when he ^^^^^^^^^^• 
accepts it as his religion, it assumes complete 
control of him, and promises amplest provision 
for all his spiritual necessities. Along whatever 
pathway and through whatever vicissitudes he 
may be led, his ultimate triumph is assured. 



^6 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES, 

Fulfilment of its promises breeds the conviction 
that the religion must be what it claims to be, — 
a religion given by revelation from God. And 
the more varied the experiences of fulfilment, 
the stronger the conviction. The evidence on 
which the conviction rests being cumulative, 
the conviction grows in strength throughout the 
longest life. 

6. Objection to the validity of the argument 
as being individual, and of force with him 
Thatexpe- Only who has had the experience, is 
rience is j^q^ ^^jj grounded. As well object to 

individual ^ -* 

does not the reasoning of the mathematician on 

invalidate ^i i .1 . i • • 1 • 

itasevi- the ground that his premises, his pro- 
dence ccsses, and consequently his conclu- 

sions, are unintelligible to him who is ignorant 
of mathematics; or to the reasoning of the phi- 
losopher, on the ground that only those ac- 
quainted with philosophy can appreciate it 
Inability to appreciate an argument in no case 
invalidates it. If one would see and feel the 
force of mathematical and philosophical reason- 
ing, he must know something of mathematics 
and philosophy. If one would estimate aright 
the argument from Christian experience, he 
must have the experience. And this experi- 
ence every one who will may easily obtain. 
Unlike the long training requisite for mathe- 
matical or philosophical reasoning, it may begin 
on the instant, and enough of it be speedily 



EVIDENCE FROM CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE, yj 

acquired to enable one to feel and to wield the 
force of an argument from it. It is not the 
argument from experience which is at fault, but 
the objector who refuses to comply with the 
conditions for appreciating it. 

Even if it be admitted that the evidence from 
experience is individual, and can be convincing 
to him only who knows what the ex- 

, , . , . . . Most con- 

perience really is, yet to him it is the vincing 
most convincing of all. It, in fact, alone ^^^ho 
fully qualifies him for an appreciation i^as the ex- 

-^ ^ ^ ^ ^ perience. 

of other evidences. He became a 
Christian, not because outward evidences per- 
suaded him, but because consciousness of in- 
ward want impelled him. This inward want 
once satisfied, the meaning and worth of out- 
ward evidences are easily understood. They 
are invaluable as defences against outward as- 
saults. Assailed by critics, he fortifies the out- 
works of his faith by evidences gathered from 
every available field of knowledge; but that 
which holds him in perfect peace and assurance 
of safety, is the felt power of his faith in the 
personal and living Christ. Nor, after all, is this 
evidence from experience exclusively individual 
and private. In one sense it becomes general 
and public. Individuals, multiplying and unit- 
ing in their testimonies through successive gen- 
erations, make public proclamation to all human 
intelligence. Countless millions of these testi- 



78 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES, 

monies, rolling up through all the Christian cen- 
turies into the vast volume of Christian literature, 
constitute an array of evidence in behalf of the 
Divine origin of Christianity which unbelief can- 
not on any plea set aside. 



ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY. 79 



PART III. 

EVIDENCE FROM PAST AND PRESENT 
ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

The Christian religion has now existed in the 
world nearly nineteen centuries. Throughout 
this period it has been giving evi- christian- 
dence of its superhuman qualities and ityi^ac- 

^ . 7 . . cord with 

power, and thus of its Divine origin, etemai 
It has done this by its re-creation of h^^n 
the character of those believing in it, p^o^®^^. 
and by its gradual uplifting and transformation 
of races and nations among whom it has gained 
a footing. Had its influence been corrupting 
and degrading, instead of elevating and refining, 
this would have been regarded as decisive evi- 
dence against any claims that could have been 
made for it as coming from God. The con- 
tinuously refining and elevating influence shows 
it, on the contrary, to be in accord with the 
eternal laws of human progress, and thus to 
represent the Eternal Mind that shapes the des- 
tinies of individuals and nations. 

The special aim of Christianity is to induce 
individuals to such an acceptance of its promises 



80 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES, 

Christian- and Compliance with its requirements 
indi^^dimi ^s shall rcsult in that personal renova- 
renovation. ^j^j^ known in the Sacred Scriptures as 
*' Salvation." Jesus Christ announced that He 
had come into the world to make this salvation 
attainable, but that it must be attained, if at all, 
by each individual for himself. Every one seek 
ing this salvation is instinctively moved to seek, 
and to associate himself with, others of like 
disposition. In this way, under the directing 
power of the Holy Spirit, originated the Chris- 
tian Church ; and by the same instinctive move- 
ment of individuals, and under the same directing 
power, the Church has been perpetuated. Each 
individual sheds a light only on his own imme- 
diately surrounding darkness. Many similar 
lights shining together illumine an ever-widening 
area. The salt of a single Christian example, at 
first affecting only one's own limited environ- 
ment, diffuses itself, with a constant extension of 
its preservative quality, through the masses of 
society. Thus Christianity, in addition to its 
specific work on the hearts and on the charac- 
ters of a chosen few, also confers manifold bene- 
fits on society at large and on the national life. 



INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 8 1 



CHAPTER I. 

BENEFICENT INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Among the distinguishing characteristics of 
Christian nations none are so marked or so 
easily traced to their orie^in as those 

,. ^1 • • . n Beneficent 

due directly to Christian influence, influence 
It is not, however, forgotten that the tianity^' 
beneficence of this influence is often ^/*®!^, 

deniea. 

denied. It is declared to have been mis- 
chievous, and sometimes even baneful. Some 
of these allegations have originated in a mis- 
understanding and misjudgment of the facts 
and teachings of Christianity, and some have 
been based on an abuse of Christianity by organ- 
izations supposed to represent it aright, and 
ordinarily known as Christian churches. The 
real Church of Christ — the actual '* kingdom of 
God '* among men — is a living organism, made 
vital in every part by the presence of the Spirit 
of the personal Christ. Ecclesiastical organiza- 
tions, known to the public by their function- 
aries, and designated '^ churches,'' have often so 
presented Christianity as to furnish apparent 
ground for serious charges against Christianity 
itself. The difl"erence, however, between Chris- 
tianity as Christ gave it, as the New Testament 

6 



82 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES, 

presents it, and as a select few in the churches 
illustrate it, — between such a Christianity, and 
the ecclesiastical organizations popularly sup- 
posed to represent it, cannot without confusion 
of thought be overlooked. 

Section I. — Allegations originating in Mis- 
judgment OF the Facts and Teachings of 
Christianity. 

I. It has been charged that the influence of 
Christianity has been unfavorable to temper- 
charge ance ; that the first miracle of Jesus — 

that Chris- , i , . r . • . 

tianityis the tummg of watcr mto wme — was 
M/to tern- ^^^ ^^ production of a dangerous lux- 
perance. ury, and in needless profusion. The 
miracle, it is said, warrants a free use of wine, 
and the use of wine prepares the way for the 
use of spirituous liquors, and so for intemper- 
ance. Christianity is thus declared to be, though 
in a remote way, but to an appreciable degree, 
responsible for intemperance among the so 
called Christian nations. And it cannot be 
denied that the Turkish use of the terms 
** Frank " (Christian) and ** drunkard " as synon- 
ymous, is not so wholly unwarranted as might 
at first appear. Buddhism and Mohammedan- 
ism, the only religions now competing with 
Christianity for supremacy in the world, both 
of them prohibit the use of all intoxicants as 



INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 83 

drinks. The superiority claimed for these reH- 
gions over Christianity in the matter of temper- 
ance is not, therefore, judging by the habits of 
the people professing the religions, so utterly 
chimerical as some have been disposed to think. 

But the objection to the beneficent influence 
of Christianity on the ground of its permission 
of the use of wine, is urged mainly by a 
few extremists among the advocates ity deals 
of total abstinence. Like other extrem- ^deriying 
ists among reformers, they are impa- ^o^*:®^ 
tient of whatever may appear to obstruct graduaUy 
their way, and denounce it as unqual- ^®^^"^* 
ifiedly evil. Over zealous in pursuit of their 
object, they would accomplish in a day what 
God will bring to pass only through compli- 
ance with the laws of the slowly moving forces 
of society. They forget that Jesus in planting 
Christianity in the world recognized and partici- 
pated in all such established usages of His day, 
social, civil, and religious, as were not in them- 
selves positively evil, and did so that, by im- 
buing them with His Spirit, He might in time 
either bring them to an end, or so refine them 
as to transform them into agencies for good. 

Marriage among the Jews was always a fes- 
tive occasion, and was celebrated with wine. 
Jesus, coming to Cana accompanied by Miracle at 
a few friends who had recently attached ^^^^• 
themselves to Him as disciples, accepted for 



84 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

Himself and his friends an invitation to such a 
marriage festival. The unanticipated presence 
of Jesus and his disciples required more wine 
than the bridegroom had provided. The mother 
of Jesus privately suggested to Him that, as 
He and His friends were the occasion of the 
unexpected deficiency, it would be a fit thing 
for Him to procure an additional supply ; but not 
a word in the narrative implies that she expected 
He would do it by a miracle. The emergency 
called for His interposition. He produced the 
wine, not to sanction its use for all time, either at 
marriages or on other festive occasions, but sim- 
ply to meet the requirements of a Jewish custom. 
Time and place called for it. But he was estab- 
lishing in the world a religion whose precepts 
and spirit should in time purge all usages of 
their elements of evil. And it is not to be for- 
gotten that it is Christianity which furnishes the 
friends of total abstinence with the purest and 
most effective of their motives. 

The methods of defending Christianity against 
the allegation of its non-beneficent influence in 
False and the matter of temperance, especially 
feuce^of against the allegation that the miracle 
themiracie. at Caua countenauccs the use of intoxi- 
cants, are not all of them in exact accord with 
the facts of the case. Thus, when it is main- 
tained that the wn'nes of Palestine were devoid 
of the alcoholic element, and that the wine pro- 



INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 85 

duced by Jesus was no more intoxicating than 
the simple juice of the grape, a position is 
assumed which accords neither with John's 
narrative of the event, nor with what was un- 
doubtedly true of Palestinian wines. Nor again 
does it meet the case to affirm that the water 
did not actually become wine, but that, through 
hallucination or mesmeric influence, the ruler of 
the feast thought he was drinking wine while 
drinking only water. The supposition could 
accord neither with the honesty of Jesus nor 
with the truthfulness of the narrator. The only 
rational conclusion from the narrative is, that the 
ruler of the feast partook of real wine. But 
there is no evidence in the narrative that all the 
water in the six jars was transmuted into wine. 
The natural interpretation of the language of the 
account is, that only so much of the water became 
wine as was drawn out for use. The charge, 
therefore, that the miracle was wrought for the 
production of a luxury, and to an amount alto- 
gether in excess of the needs of the occasion, 
falls to the ground, as having no basis of fact. 
Only the lack occasioned by the unexpected 
presence of Jesus and His followers was pro- 
vided for. To plead this provision as evidence 
that Christianity warrants a festive use of intoxi- 
cants is to misunderstand both the purpose of 
Jesus and the spirit of His religion. 

2. It is alleged against Christianity, that by 



86 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

the motives propounded to induce to an individ- 
Appeaito ^^ acceptance of its offer of personal 
lowmotives salvatiou — viz. by appeals to fear of 

charged on ^ . • x a 

christan- perdition for refusing its offer, and to 
^ ^' hope of endless happiness for accept- 

ing it — it makes a direct appeal to self-regard, 
and selfishness is systematically cultivated. 

In considering this allegation it is first requi- 
site that we free our minds of the vulgar and 
erroneous conception of the salvation 

True idea ^ 

of"Saiva- offered. It is not a mere release by 
fiat of incurred penalty, and a bestowal 
of blessedness with a promise of its endless 
continuance. The salvation proposed by Jesus 
Christ is both a rescue from the dominion of 
moral evil, and the impartation, through Divine 
discipline, of a personal righteousness. The 
blessedness promised is an unclouded conscious- 
ness of harmony with God. 

To the charge that Christianity breeds selfish- 
ness, it is sufficient to reply that its very method 
Deals a of Conferring the offered salvation not 
to stm^h-"^ only deals a death-blow to selfishness, 
ness. but plants in the soul the opposite prin- 

ciple of self-denial. The salvation offered in 
the Gospel is attainable only through loving 
trust in One whose whole earthly life was an 
unending act of self-sacrifice. The loving trust 
that initiates the rescuing process soon deepens 
into conscious fellowship; and fellowship is 



INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY, 8/ 

partnership of spirit. To the beHever, hke the 
Christ in whom he trusts and with whom he 
communes, the highest satisfaction, the purest 
and most abiding joy, is in denying himself for 
the good of others. 

That Christianity in its initial dealing with 
man does appeal to self-regard is evident from 
every page of the New Testament ; but Aim of 
from the same pages it is equally evi- {^^f^|'^" 
dent that self-interest is appealed to man with 
only that it may be made to give place noblest mo- 
to something higher, and something *^^®^* 
capable of endless improvement in quality and 
in power to control and refine the soul. It is 
the glory of Christianity that it possesses in 
itself a range of motives reaching to the lowest 
depths into which man can fall, and to the high- 
est stage to which he can ascend. The farther 
the Christian ascends in the scale of being, less 
and less is self regarded, until he finds his su- 
preme satisfaction in identification of himself 
with the best interests of the universe, and with 
the perfect will of Him who has called all into 
being. Christianity takes man as it finds him, 
plying him with such motives as he can appre- 
ciate; but having once won his attention and 
his love, it never loses its hold on him until it 
brings him into harmony of purpose with God 
Himself. 

3. The Christian Scriptures, it is said, recog- 



88 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

nize, and by recognizing perpetuate, class dis- 
ciassdis- tinctions in society. They represent 
tinctions. jesus ES Specifying the preaching of 
the Gospel to the poor to be one of the distinc- 
tive marks of the Messiahship. They also 
everywhere make care for the poor a Christian 
duty. Alms-giving is enjoined as of universal 
obligation. Warnings against a craving for 
riches and against a love of them when pos- 
sessed, are manifold and of the gravest nature. 

The tendency of these teachings, it is charged, 
has been to strengthen and perpetuate class dis- 
tinctions, rather than to weaken and obliterate 
social inequalities. The poor have often felt 
encouraged to regard themselves as the favorites 
of heaven, as having before them the prospect 
of superior blessings in another state of being. 
By becoming habitual recipients of alms, they 
have been demoralized and degraded into per- 
manent pauperism. Poverty has been regarded 
as a guaranty of Divine favor, and among certain 
religious orders poverty and mendicancy have 
been exalted to the dignity of virtues. Into 
the minds of alms-givers has also often crept 
the feeling of complacency as doers of meritori- 
ous acts. And the very rich, conscious of being 
objects of unfavorable regard with their fellow 
men and stigmatized of God, have often become 
morose, selfish, and defiant alike of God and 
man. 



INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY, 89 

But it is not to be forgotten that injunctions 
in respect to the poor and the duty of alms- 
e^iving, and warnings arainst riches, had , . . . 

00' 00 ' Inj unctions 

their origin mainly in the condition of explained 

by state of 

the Jews and the state of society when Jewish so- 
the injunctions and warnings were first ^^®*^* 
uttered. The Jews were a conquered and op- 
pressed people, and their poor were hopelessly 
and helplessly poor. The rich had mostly gof 
ten their riches by extortion, rapine, and exces- 
sive usury. Christianity could not do otherwise 
than recognize the existing condition of society 
when it began its work, and point out the mutual 
obligations resting on its several classes. But 
there have been peoples who much more needed 
to have the Christian duties of industry, self-re- 
straint, and practical morality, than that of alms- 
giving, urged on their attention. The excessive 
alms-giving and pauperism among certain peo- 
ples of Southern Europe have been due to no 
teaching of New Testament Christianity, but to 
the traditional notions of the merit of alms-giv- 
ing and to the example of the mendicant friars. 
The most effective cure of it all would be the 
open New Testament in the vernacular, and in 
the hands of the common people. It nowhere 
encourages indiscriminate charity, and nowhere 
warrants the practice of begging. The teach- 
ings of the New Testament are one-sided on no 
subject, but accord with the requirements of all 



90 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

national laws and of the common sense of man- 
kind. Its teachings are comprehensive of the 
needs of all peoples and of all states of society. 
And no state of society has yet come, or is 
likely to come, in which the vicissitudes and 
unavoidable disasters of life will not demand 
practical charity to the suffering, and will not 
bring rich blessings to the charitable. 

4. Christianity, it is charged, though distinct- 
ively moral in its requirements, is, inconsistently 
Charge that with itsclf. Unfavorable in its theological 
of vicarious doctrincs to the cultivation of morality, 
salvation is Vicarious salvation, it is said, is one of 

immoral in ' ' 

its effects, the most fundamental of its doctrines; 
and to trust in what another does and suffers for 
us rather than in what we do for ourselves, it is 
declared, is to rob morality of a chief incentive 
to the cultivation of it. To this it is sufficient 
to reply that the vicariousness of what Christ 
did and suffered is undoubtedly a Christian doc- 
trine. The Sacred Scriptures also very plainly 
teach that man is incapable of saving himself by 
his own works, but must do it, if at all, through 
faith in One who has interposed in his behalf, 
and who, by His resurrection from the dead, 
has proved His interposition to be efficacious to 
all who will trust in Him. But this vicarious- 
ness may be, and often has been, strangely mis- 
understood and misapplied. It is misunderstood 
when the metaphorical language in which the 



INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY, 9 1 

Holy Scriptures describe it, is taken in a strictly 
literal sense. 

The metaphors are borrowed from courts of 
justice. But when to these metaphors is given 
a literal and scientific meaning, and on „ 

^ ^ ^ ^ Perversion 

this is built up an exact juridical of the doc- 
atonement, leaving '^ nothing great or 
small for us to do,'* a subtle Antinomianism may 
easily creep in, and a robust morality may fail 
to be acquired. The fault, however, is not in 
the doctrine of the vicariousness of the life 
and death of Christ, but in an inexcusable per- 
version of it. Few truths are more self-evident 
than the doctrine that every man becomes 
like the person he most profoundly loves and 
believes in. Jesus Christ lived, suffered, and 
died for us — in our stead — vicariously, that we, 
coming into a loving and trustful fellowship 
with Him, should become like Him. The vi- 
cariousness of Christ's work and death avails 
for no man who does not through his faith avail 
himself of it. Rightly understood and believed 
in, instead of robbing morality of one incentive, 
it gives to it many of the strongest and most 
effective conceivable, — incentives that gather 
strength with every new experience in life. 

5. Christianity has been objected to as culti- 
vating the softer and more feminine cultivates 
virtues to the comparative neglect of s,veiys!,fter 
the hardier and more masculine; that virtues. 



92 CHRISTIAN- EVIDENCES. 

it IS, accordngly, in its moral discipline a religion 
for women rather than for men. And it may- 
be admitted to surpass Judaism and other an- 
cient religions, as well as Stoicism and other 
philosophies, in its production of the gentler 
virtues. It does this by its method of dealing 
with man. It begins its work with him by plant- 
ing itself in his heart and assuming control of his 
affections. Other religions work from without 
the man, inward ; Christianity from within, out- 
ward. Christ, the Source and Centre of the 
religion, was Himself the embodiment, and prac- 
tical illustration of the highest spiritual refine- 
ment. One of the distinctive marks of the 
Christian type of character is gentleness and 
refinement of spirit. 

But Christianity is neither neglectful nor un- 
productive of the sturdy and heroic virtues. In 
Heroism of fact, the sturdicst virtues and the high- 
Christians. ^^^ hcroism are always found to spring 

from a heart of gentleness and purity. Physi- 
cal courage, the source of the vulgar type of 
the heroic, requires neither mental reflection 
nor the finer qualities of heart to give it birth, 
and it is every way inferior to moral courage, 
as this is to Christian courage. The impetuous 
Peter could at midnight draw his sword and 
slash away at Malchus, cutting off his right ear 
at a stroke, and before morning, cowering in the 
presence of a servant-maid who accused him of 



INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 93 

having been a disciple of Jesus, could deny that 
he ever knew Him. But when Peter had re- 
covered from the mortification into which his 
moral cowardice had betrayed him, and when 
his Christian courage had become mature, he 
could without the quiver of a nerve face any 
danger, even the most torturing of deaths, for 
the love he bore to the Master and to the cause 
he had by his moral cowardice so much dis- 
honored. Among all the heroes of the world's 
history none have yet equalled the heroes of the 
Christian Church, who in the name of Christ 
have fought the fiercest foes and have achieved for 
mankind its richest and most enduring blessings. 

Section II. — Objections arising from an Identi- 
fication OF Christianity with the Church. 

Christianity presents itself in the world under 
four aspects: first, as a spirit and life derived 
from Jesus Christ; secondly, as a collection of 
sacred writings and creeds by which the lives 
of its adherents are to be regulated ; thirdly, as 
a cultus or worship paid to God as Supreme; 
and, fourthly, as associations of men and women 
organized into churches for the cultivation of 
the Christian life according to the Sacred Scrip- 
tures, and for offering public worship and other 
religious services to God. It is rational, there- 
fore, that critical estimates of the value of Chris- 
tianity should turn either on judgments formed 



94 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

respecting its teachings, or on judgments formed 
respecting its churches. Having glanced in the 
preceding section at the estimates founded on 
erroneous judgments of its teaching, let us con- 
sider briefly the allegation against it arising from 
identifying it with the Church.^ 

I. The Church, it is said, has often been in 
league with oppressors ministering to the rich 
Charge that ^^^^ powerful rather than to the poor 
the Church ^j^j dowu-troddcn. The charge may 

has minis- ^ •' 

teredtothe bc truc of Certain churches and at cer- 
than the tain periods, but lies neither against 
poor. Christianity, which is supposed to be 

represented by the churches, nor against the 
Church in itself considered, but against domi- 
nating members of the churches, or against self- 
ish and faithless officials who have perverted 
the Church to their own private and personal 
ends. Christianity, as we have seen, has been 
criticised adversely for the emphasis it lays on 
care for the poor. It is not its fault if its pro- 
fessed adherents have been untrue to its teach- 
ings and spirit. 

1 The word " Church " is here used in its collective or ge- 
neric sense, not as denoting the spiritual, invisible aggregate 
of true believers, but as comprehending all those organiza- 
tions, under whatever name known, which have been commonly 
understood to be representative of Christianity at different peri- 
ods and among different peoples. The allegations specified 
may have been true sometimes of one, and sometimes of an- 
other, of these organizations. 



INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY, 95 

2. The Church, it is said, has often engaged 
in bloody persecutions for opinion's sake, claim- 
ing in doing so to be acting on au- 
thority from God, and to be fulfilling the^chmxh 
one of its own legitimate functions. ^^^dfoT 
It has burned heretics and has waged opinion's 
desolating wars in support of profess- 
edly religious ends. And it is against no single 
branch of the Church that the allegations can 
justly be made. Churches in alliance with 
States, and empowered to inflict the death pen- 
alty, may have seemed to be most cruel perse- 
cutors, but not less relentless have been the 
churches that could inflict only ecclesiastical 
penalties, or cast unjust aspersions still harder 
to bean All have gone upon the supposition 
that if they could stifle convictions by penal 
inflictions, they could preserve from error and 
establish in the truth. No species of persecu- 
tion, however, can justify itself by any precept 
or principle of Christianity. In fact, any resort 
to force is wholly alien to its spirit, and a viola- 
tion of its plainest precepts. The origin of per- 
secution is in a total misconception of the office 
and of the responsibility of the Church, as well 
as of the method by which men are induced 
either to accept or to reject any belief. No 
form of persecution ever yet won to a love of 
truth, though it has persuaded multitudes into a 
hypocritical pretence of loving it. Christianity 



g6 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

is, throughout its teachings, too thoroughly ac- 
cordant with the laws of human psychology to 
commit the blunder of persecuting for non- 
acceptance of its declarations or of its oflfers. It 
was neither Christianity nor the Church, in itself 
considered, that burnt Ridley and Latimer in 
England, or Servetus in Switzerland, or witches 
in Massachusetts, but the bigotry and ignorance 
of Church functionaries. 

3. The Church, it is also alleged, has often 
refused liberty of thought in other directions 
That it has ^^^^^ ^^ theological thinking. It has 
resisted the resisted with fiery opposition the pro- 
Scienceand gress of both Scicncc and Philosophy, 

Philosophy. ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^ ^f ^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^ 

denied. The most discreditable chapters in 
Church History are those which detail the hos- 
tility in past centuries of ecclesiastics to every 
advancing step in scientific and historical in- 
quiry; but the hostility was born neither of 
the spirit of the Gospel nor of New Testament 
teaching, but of the dense ignorance and fa- 
naticism of ecclesiastics. Christianity of itself 
breeds thoughtfulness and stimulates inquiry. 
Neither it nor the Church proper was respon- 
sible for the ill treatment of Roger Bacon or of 
Galileo, or for the burning of Giordano Bruno, 
or for the apprehension of danger alike from 
Roman Catholics and Protestants, felt by Des- 
cartes, any more than Greek Philosophy or the 



INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY, gj 

Athenian State was responsible for the fate of 
Socrates. 

4. The Church, it is affirmed, has often con- 
nived at great social and political wrongs. It 
has winked at, . and even defended, cj^^gethat 
domestic slavery. It is sometimes the church 

has defend- 

claimed that the holding of men and ed social 
women in chattel bondage has the ^°^^* 
defence of Apostolic authority. The Apostle 
Paul, it is said, recognized and virtually ap- 
proved of slavery by returning the runaway 
slave Onesimus to his master Philemon, and by 
prescribing rules of conduct for both slaves and 
their masters. The Apostle Peter is equally ex- 
plicit in enjoining faithful service on slaves. Both 
Peter and Paul commanded obedience to the ex- 
isting government, even though it should chance 
to be, as was the case then, a government admin- 
istered by one of the bloodiest of tyrants, — one 
under which they both suffered martyrdom.^ 

But there are two considerations which they, 
who have pressed these charges against the 
Church and against the teaching of the Apostles, 
have been quite too ready to overlook. The 
first is, that the Church, unconsciously influenced 

1 Prof. W. M. Ramsay, in his *' The Church in the Roman 
Empire before A. D. 170," Ch. xiii., maintains that the First 
Epistle of Peter was not written under the reign of Nero, but 
under the reign of Vespasian, and somewhere between a. d. 75 
and 80. And the reasons adduced for this belief are not with- 
out weight. 

7 



98 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

by motives of interest, have put upon the lan- 
guage of the Apostles a meaning which they 
do not warrant. Instead of sanctioning slavery, 
they simply prescribed rules to be observed by 
the Christian master and the Christian servant, 
well knowing that in due time Christianity, in 
the fulness of its teaching, would cut up the 
whole system of slavery by its roots. Christian- 
ity, as taught alike by Christ and His Apostles, 
did not seek to correct the wrongs of society 
and the injustices of governments, by inciting to 
sudden and violent revolutions, but it aimed, by 
the inculcation of just ideas and the infusion of 
a right spirit, to effect a radically progressive 
improvement of human society, and thus, a re- 
construction of human governments. The high 
aim has always been so to inspire a people with 
a love of justice and righteousness as to effect a 
permanent cure of all wrongs, both social and 
political. Let us glance at some of the benefits 
which, in pursuit of its purpose, it has already 
bestowed on our race. 

Section HI. — Positive Benefits of Christianity. 

There are three ways in which these benefits 
have become apparent in the world's history; 
Comparison ^^^ ^f them general, and one special. 
of Christian In a broad and general way, these may 

and non- . . - ^- . . 

Christian DC sccu m a comparisou of Christian 
nations. ^^^ non-Christian nations; or, in a 



INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 99 

comparison of a Christian nation as it is to-day 
with itself as it was prior to its Christianization ; 
or, in a more specific way, by noticing certain 
single and distinctive results produced by Chris- 
tianity among peoples that have accepted it as 
their religion. 

Thus, first, if we compare in a general way 
any one of the so-called Christian nations with 
any other nation under the sway of a religion not 
Christian, the difference in the influence of the 
two religions is too marked not to be immedi- 
ately recognized. The influence of Christianity 
in refining the moral tastes and exalting the 
moral character of a Christian nation is too evi- 
dent to require any justification of its claim to 
be regarded as beneficent. 

Or, secondly, if we compare any one of the 
so-called Christian nations of to-day with itself 
as it was when Christianity first came comparisoD 
to it, we may at once discern evidences ^^ J^^^i^^^ 

"^ before and 

of a progress which nothing inherent after be- 
in itself can explain, and only the forces chrSLn- 
of the Christian religion can adequately ^®^* 
account for. ' Thus we may take England and 
trace her course as she emerged from the sav- 
agery and barbarism in which the Romans 
found her, down to the present day, when she 
stands in the van of the nations of the world. 
Many bloods have commingled in forming the 
amalgam of her character. Many forces have 



100 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

contributed to mould it, some of them coming 
from remote plains of India, some from the 
wilds of Saxony, some from the rocky shores 
of Denmark, some from Greece, and some from 
Rome. But over all has dominated the Chris- 
tian religion, controlling the conscience and 
permeating the heart of the nation; and thus 
fusing all forces at work in it into a clearly 
definable unity. Christianity above all else has 
made the England of History and the England 
of to-day. But, thirdly, the actual benefits con- 
ferred by Christianity may perhaps be more 
clearly discerned by specifying some of the 
distinctively Christian results produced by it 
among nations that have accepted it as their 
religion. Thus, — 

I. The Christian religion both by its precepts 
and its spirit has uniformly tended directly to 
Spirit of ^^ eradication, root and branch, of ev- 
christian- ^ry spccics of human bondage, whether 

ity adverse . , - - , . , ^ t^ 

to human m the form of domestic slavery,^ of 

on age. gQcial caste, or of political tyranny. 

Its two doctrines of individual responsibility and 

1 J. H. Muirhead, in his ** Elements of Ethics,'* § 97, says, 
** Slave emancipation, in more recent times, was the result of 
the discovery that the system of industry founded upon slavery 
was an unprofitable one, and unable to compete with free 
labor." This statement requires a much larger qualification 
than he seems disposed to allow it. Unprofitableness was not 
the cause of the abolition of slavery either in the British colo- 
nies or in the United States. 



INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 1 01 

of the common brotherhood of mankind struck 
directly at self-aggrandizement, and begat in its 
stead sympathy with the weakest and lowliest. 
Though Jesus gave no injunctions about slavery, 
His loving pity for all who were in distress dis- 
closed the power of religion to melt the bands 
of oppression. His requirement that every 
one shall love his neighbor as himself both re- 
minds us of His example and prompts us to 
follow it. Slowly but surely His religion, from 
the beginning of its work in the world until now, 
has been making the wrongs of men increas- 
ingly clear, and as the time has been ripe for it, 
has been bringing some of them to an end. 
And it has done this, not by superficial remedies, 
but by radical cures. Throughout the centuries 
it has been making it more and more clear that 
the onlyjust ground for distinctions among men 
has been in their personal characters. The evi- 
dence of a beneficent influence has been all the 
more apparent from the groundlessness of the 
charge already considered, that Religion has con- 
nived at oppression, and has sympathized with 
oppressors rather than with the oppressed. 

2. Christianity has done for woman what no 
other religion has done, or has conceived it as 
possible to do. And what it has done christian- 
for her has proclaimed to all the world eiev^d 
its beneficent influence. Enlightened woman, 
women, bred and living under other religions, rec- 



I02 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

ognize this influence, and see in it a ground of 

hope for the reHef of their sex. A comparison 

of the condition of women as it was at any one 

of the great centres of civiHzation, such as 

Athens, Rome, or Jerusalem, when Christ came 

into the world, with her condition at any one of 

the centres of Christian civilization in our day, 

will show what a change has been wrought for 

her. From being the slave of man, the prey of 

his lusts, a toy for him to play with awhile and 

to fling aside when tired of her, she has been 

placed by his side by Christianity, his companion 

and his equal. Nor can it justly be said that 

the worship of Mary has done this. Nor, again, 

has it been mainly by the example of Jesus in 

His care for the welfare of women during His 

stay on earth that His religion has wrought 

most eff"ectively for her. Nothing less than the 

whole scope of His teaching and the broad 

spirit of charity which it inculcates, working 

through many centuries,»will account for what 

has been accomplished for woman, — a religion 

which teaches us that in Christ Jesus there is 

neither male nor female, but all are one in Him. 

3. Christianity gave to the world a practical 

and an effectual philanthropy. Jesus Himself in- 

„ . troduced it when in founding^ the king- 

Has given ^ ^ 

a true phi- dom of God on earth He performed 

His gracious works of healing. His 

disciples followed His example in caring for the 



INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 103 

sick, the helpless, and the destitute. The Chris- 
tian world has since become studded all over 
with Hospitals, Asylums, and Homes for the 
forsaken and forlorn. Other religions have, it 
must be admitted, also recognized the duty of 
philanthropy. Buddha, more than five centu- 
ries before Christ, enjoined care for the sick and 
suffering, and his disciples provided Hospitals 
and Asylums. But a religion which recognized 
no God of mercy and pity for man, and made 
it man's highest duty to aim at the extinction 
of every desire of his soul, was not a religion 
which could breed a living and abiding phi- 
lanthropy. The Stoics also a century and a 
half before Christ had uttered beautiful senti- 
ments about the unity of the race and the com- 
mon nature of all men, and the consequent 
duties of humanity and philanthropy. In the 
first and second centuries after Christ, the two 
most distinguished of Stoical writers, Epictetus 
and Marcus Aurelius, were unqualified in their 
praise of what is now called '' Altruism, *' — re- 
gard for the welfare of mankind. Epictetus, to 
quote the language of Zeller, advocated '^the 
most comprehensive and unlimited philan- 
thropy/' and Marcus Aurelius urged the duty of 
a philanthropy " the most limitless and unself- 
ish," and even urged it while putting to death, 
on account of their religion, such Christians as 
Justin Martyr and his associates. But a religion 



104 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES, 

or a philosophy, or whatever else Stoicism may- 
be called, which could both advocate and prac- 
tise self-murder when life should promise no 
pleasure in the continuance of it, was not a re- 
ligion or philosophy which would either origi- 
nate or perpetuate a practical or an effectual 
philanthropy. Christianity alone could do it. 
In our day, however, attempts are made to give 
to philanthropy a scientific form and a scientific 
basis. Under the name of Socialism it proposes 
by scientific and statutory methods to recon- 
struct human society. But divested of the inner 
life and nature which Christianity, its real parent, 
originally gave it, the issues of its endeavors 
no prophet is needed to foretell. Only by its 
re-Christianization can it ever control human 
wills and become world-wide in its aim and its 
power. Signs of a fast-spreading enthusiasm 
for humanity are all hopeful, but only when this 
enthusiasm shall be touched with a conscious- 
ness of co-operation with the infinite love of the 
Infinite Father will it become an effective and 
a world encircling philanthropy. 

4. Throughout the Christian centuries there 
has been a slow but steadily growing improve- 
improve- ment in jurisprudence and penology, 
j^rispm- Organized jurisprudence in the mod- 
dence. ^m world had its origin in ancient Ro- 

man law, modified however by canon law, which 
itself also showed traces of the shaping influ- 



INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 105 

ence of the theocratic laws of Judaism. The aim 
ahke of Roman law and Jewish law had been 
the maintenance of justice, but of justice as 
enforced by the law of retaliation. 

The Church was too closely allied to the State, 
and too deeply imbued with its secular spirit, to 
be alive to its opportunity to work mercifully 
for man in its canon law. The old idea of the 
function of law as the administration of justice 
through vengeance still kept its place, and 
kept it with the sanction of the Church. Only 
slowly in the history of the Church has the 
Christian method of dealing with crime been 
understood; only at a comparatively late period 
in its history has the spirit of Jesus towards 
criminals got itself recognized by those who 
have enacted criminal statutes. 

In two ways has the result of this recogni- 
tion been manifested in jurisprudence : first, in 
adjusting penalty as nearly as possi- 
ble to degree of guilt as ascertained mentof 
by scrutiny of the disposition and mo- ^^^^ 
tive of the criminal, instead of punishing all 
crimes of the same name with the same pen- 
alty; and, secondly, in seeking by penalty not 
alone to inflict vengeance on the criminal, but, 
if possible, to effect his reform. It is Christian- 
ity that has transformed the pestilent prison 
and dungeon into the well-lighted and cheerful 
reformatory. 



I06 ■ CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

On a broader scale, and in a more conspicu- 
ous way, the benign influence of Christianity 
,^ ^ ^ has been shown in its modification of 

Mode of 

dealing the modc of dcaHug with national of- 
tionaiof- fcnccs. Nevcr, perhaps, in the history 
fences. ^^ ^^ world was there an illustration 
of this influence on penology more striking, 
or attended with a notoriety more world-wide, 
than was furnished in what occurred at the close 
of our late civil war. When the great Rebellion 
had been suppressed, the national government 
was confronted with one of the most difficult 
problems that can come before the rulers of a 
nation, — What should it do with the arch-con- 
spirators with whom responsibility for the re- 
bellion rested? They were either already in the 
hands of the government or were within easy 
reach. The national Constitution had stated 
with exactness the nature of their offence, and 
had prescribed its penalty. Should the penalty 
be inflicted? Two opposite answers were given, 
and vigorously maintained. The one was, that 
a great organic law had been violated, and, 
unless the off'ence were avenged, it would be 
repeated, and endless disaster would ensue ; the 
other was, that amnesty, or at least a simple 
remission of penalty, would be safe, and much 
more in accordance with the principles and the 
spirit of the Christian religion. The latter view 
prevailed, and a great Christian nation approved 



INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY, 107 

it. It is more than doubtful if it could have 
prevailed in any earlier century, or would have 
been sanctioned by any other than a free, self- 
governing, Christian people. 

5. Christianity, if it did not absolutely origi- 
nate International Law, has at least supplied it 
as it now exists, with its most determi- intema- 
native principles. Just when it origi- tionaiiaw. 
nated is not certain. We only know that the 
nations prior to the Christian Era knew nothing 
of it. There are no traces of it among the older 
races of India, and none among the Greeks. 
Among the early Romans are found dim fore- 
shadowings of it, as, for instance, in their re- 
quirement of the sanctions of religion before 
deciding on the proclamation of war, and still 
more in their so-called Law of Nations {Jus 
Gentimn)y a code for the government of van- 
quished peoples in the provinces. It was de- 
rived in part from Roman law, in part from the 
laws and usages of the peoples to be governed, 
and in part from the dictates of nature. From 
the Roman Law of Nations International Law 
has doubtless borrowed, but it bears in every 
part of it unmistakable traces of a Christian 
influence. In fact, Christianity may be said 
virtually to have created it, though in the pro- 
cess of creation, it has wrought into the frame- 
work of it certain self-evident laws of nature, 
and certain other laws, which, though in them- 



I08 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES, 

selves not less laws of nature, had been handed 
down from Rome. 

During the earlier part of the latter half of the 
centuries of our era, there were occasional recog- 
HugoGro- nitions of the applicability of Christian 
tins on preccpts to the intercourse of nations, 

the -Right ^ \ ^ ^u ' ^ C ' A- 

of War and as wcll Es to the mtcrcoursc of mdi- 
®^^®* viduals; but it was not until well into 

the seventeenth century that Hugo Grotius, the 
scholar, theologian, and publicist of Holland, 
wrote his great treatise on the Right of War and 
Peace (^De Jure Belli et Pacis)^ and first system- 
ized the principles of International Law. He 
built avowedly on the twofold basis of Nature 
and the Christian Revelation, assuming that the 
God of Nature is also the God of Revelation, and 
that what He has wrought in the former He has 
both corroborated and made clearer in the latter. 
Some of the supposed laws of nature incorpo- 
rated by the Romans into their Law of Nations, 
he repudiated as contrary to the laws of nature, 
and justified his repudiation by an appeal to 
Christianity; one of these supposed natural 
laws was the right of a conquering nation to 
make slaves of the conquered. Throughout his 
famous treatise, his ultimate test of the truth of 
his principles was the spirit and precepts of 
Christianity. The writers who since his day 
have treated of International Law, even when 
professedly basing their principles on natural 



INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY, 109 

laws, show very plainly that their interpretation 
of these laws has been affected by the light 
that Christian Revelation has shed on them. 
The steadily growing recognition of arbitra- 
tion in some form — by referees or by national 
commissions — as a just method of settling na- 
tional disputes, and, more than all, the success- 
ful resorts to such arbitration in recent years, 
particularly by Great Britain and the United 
States, strongly mark the advancing, as well as 
the benign, influence of the Christian religion. 
All this warrants the belief that the time is yet 
to come when all the great nations will unite in 
the creation of permanent international courts, 
before which all national differences shall be 
peacefully and definitively settled. The far-off 
day foreseen by prophets, when nations shall 
** beat their swords into ploughshares and their 
spears into pruning-hooks, and none shall learn 
war any more,'' may not, after all, be so very 
remote as has commonly been feared. Mean- 
while, till peace shall come to earth to remain 
forever, let us notice : — 

6. How an advancing Christianity has been 
progressively ameliorating the horrors of war. 
Comparison of the usages of war com- AmeUora- 
mon when authentic history began, atrocities^^ 
with those now prevailing, shows at of war. 
once how vast have been the gains for humanity 
during the intervening centuries. But the ame- 



1 1 CHRISTIAN E VIDENCES. 

liorations occurring between the time of Joshua, 
or that of Samuel four centuries later, and the 
tenth or twelfth century of our era, are scarcely 
more striking than those which since then have 
taken place. Under Moses, the command to 
Joshua was to exterminate the Canaanitish 
people utterly; under Samuel, King Saul was 
commanded to *' smite Amalek and utterly de- 
stroy; spare them not, but slay both man and 
woman, infant and suckling." Saul spared 
Agag, King of the Amalekites, and Samuel 
deposed him for his disobedience, and, sending 
for Agag, '' hewed him in pieces.'* These bar- 
barities may not have been equalled in the 
Middle Ages, but the cruelties then prac- 
tised are only slightly less shocking to the sensi- 
bilities of the Christian of to-day. It was far 
along in the Christian centuries before even 
Christian nations ceased to seize and either slay 
or enslave embassies sent during war to sue 
for peace. Enslavement or mutilations worse 
than death were the not unusual fate of captives 
taken in war. It has been only within the pres- 
ent century that Christianity has begun to exer- 
cise its divine office in assuaging the agonies of 
war. Though its influence has not yet become 
strong enough to restrain nations from waging 
w^ars, it has sufficed to make combatants as con- 
siderate of each other as the exigencies of war 
will permit. Its ministrations before the walls of 



INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. Ill 

Sevastopol, and on the fields of America during 
our great civil war, have declared its power to 
alleviate the woes of war in a way which the 
human race will never cease to remember. And 
it will be more and more distinctly recognized 
as one of the thousand ways in which God, is 
teaching man to be merciful to his fellow man, in 
accordance with His holy religion given to us 
through Jesus Christ His Son. 



1 1 2 CHRISTIAN E VIDENCES, 



CHAPTER 11. 

CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH CHRISTIANITY 
ACHIEVED ITS FIRST VICTORIES. 

Like the beginning of every other great 
epoch in the world's history, the beginning of 
Prepara- Christianity was made possible only 
christin- ^V Conditions then existing. The con- 
^^y- ditions had been long time forming, 

and, when completed, bore marks of formal ad- 
justment to one another, and of an adjustment 
of all to a common end. They were marks 
such as no merely fortuitous concurrence of 
circumstances could account for. Nothing less 
than a foreseeing and predisposing Intelligence, 
supreme in its control of nations, could explain 
them. 

Three distinct lines of preparation, running 
through many centuries, but ending in the 
needed conditions, were simultaneously carried 
forward by three independent nations, — the 
Jewish, the Greek, the Roman. When Christ 
came, the fulness of time had arrived ; the world 
had been made ready for Him. But when He 
had come, the very preparations made for His 
coming became, through the perversity of man, 
the most formidable of obstacles to the pro- 



PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY. II3 

gress of His religion. The Divine Hand that so 
plainly had directed in preparing for it, was not 
less conspicuously displayed in making it victo- 
rious over every obstacle. The Divine origin 
of Christianity is not less plainly seen in the 
power that made its triumph certain, than in 
the wisdom and power that made its beginning 
possible*. 

Section I. — The Preparation wrought by 
THE Jews. 

Theirs was a twofold task: first, to develop 
crude germs of ethical and religious thought 
into the ideas to be utilized by Jesus ; Prepara- 
secondly, so to accustom the Jews to the t^°^ ^^ *^® 

^ ^ "^ Jews in de- 

thought of a Messiah, and so to keep veiopmg 
alive in them the expectation of His ntiU2;edi>y 
coming, that when He should appear '^®^^^- 
they would be willing to listen to Him. Thus, 
first, a system of moral and religious ideas was 
to be made ready. This required a long pro- 
cess. To make such ideas clear and compre- 
hensible to a people like the Jews under Moses, 
there was necessary a succession of steps from a 
lower to a higher level. They must be dealt 
with as we deal with children : words must first 
be used in a sense level with their experience 
and understanding ; as their intelligence grows, 

the words first used take on a deeper meaning, 

8 



114 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES, 

and as intelligence still advances, terms be- 
come metaphorical, and the meaning deepens 
and widens and becomes clearer. So with the 
Jews. It was but vague meanings they could 
at first attach to the terms Faith, Law, Right- 
eousness, Justice, Holiness; and but dim con- 
ceptions they could form of the office of their 
ritual, or of the future foretold by their proph- 
ets. Nothing less than the meanings which had 
been reached in the use of these when Jesus 
came, could have sufficed for the use He was 
to make of them. It is difficult, if not impos- 
sible, to conceive how He could have begun 
His teaching when He did, or have introduced 
the Kingdom of God as He did, except through 
use of what Judaism had made ready to His 
hand. 

The second function of the Jews was to 
awaken and keep alive the expectation of the 
^ , . Messiah. To do this was the special 

By keeping ^ 

alive the work of the prophcts, and most effectu- 
tionofthe ally did they accomplish it For hun- 
Messiah. .(jreds of years they rang changes on 
His coming and His offices, each generation 
adding to the emphasis of the preceding. The 
expectation had never been so strong as when 
Jesus appeared. Without this expectation it is 
next to impossible to conceive how His Messiah- 
ship, with all His want of outward insignia, could 
have been successfully pleaded. 



PREPARA TION FOR CHRISTIANITY. 1 1 5 



And it is also equally difficult, if not impos- 
sible, to conceive how Christianity without the 
Jews could have gained its first foot- By giving 
ing among the Gentiles. The Jews ttrGen- 
were scattered far and wide among the ^^®3- 
Gentile cities ; and wherever twelve of them, 
resident heads of families, were found, there, 
according to uniform custom, a synagogue 
was opened. Connected with the synagogues 
were often those known as ^* religious prose- 
lytes " (Acts xiii. 42), attracted from the more 
morally earnest heathen. To these synagogues 
the Apostle Paul and his associates in their 
missionary tours always immediately resorted 
when they entered a Gentile city, and there 
began to preach the Gospel of Christ. Converts 
from among both Jews and proselytes thus 
made in the synagogues, formed the nuclei of 
Churches, and through these the Gospel was 
brought into contact with heathen minds. With- 
out the Synagogue, the missionary labors of the 
Apostles would have been at a most crippling, 
if not fatal, disadvantage. 

But no sooner had Jesus begun His work as 
Messiah, than Judaism arrayed itself against 
Him. Its opposition was fierce and Jewish 
implacable. Every available expe- ""^^^^^ 
dient was adopted to discredit His tianity. 
teaching and to crush Him. Not content with 
murdering Him, the Jews exhausted every re- 



1 1 6 CHRIS TTAN E VIDENCES. 

source in vain attempts to exterminate His fol- 
lowers and annihilate His religion. Judaism 
thus made itself to be the dark background on 
which the Almighty, who had planted and 
always protected it, could trace in letters of 
light, to be read of all men, that the Christian 
religion was a religion which His own Right 
Hand had planted, and which could not be 
uprooted. The whole history of the Jews from 
Abraham to John the Baptist had been one 
continuous and luminous illustration of the Di- 
vine Presence and Power, raising them for an 
end higher than themselves; when they would 
thwart that end, the same Divine Power was still 
more conspicuously manifested in bringing the 
end, in spite of them, to its full accomplishment. 

Section H. — The Preparation furnished by 
THE Greeks. 

They furnished it in two ways, — by their 
Philosophy and by their Language. They were 
^ , pre-eminentlv the thinkers and the in- 

Greeks ^ 

prepared vcstigators amoug the nations. They 
Christian- Carried philosophical inquiry to the ut- 
^*^' most limit then attained or attainable 

by the human intellect. They also cultivated 
their language with an assiduity and to a degree 
equalled by no other people. They gave to it 
a degree of excellence surpassed by no other 



PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY, 11/ 

tongue ever yet spoken among men, — a lan- 
guage suited alike to the uses of Poetry, Phi- 
losophy, and History. 

By their philosophy was accomplished a two- 
fold purpose. First, by it was shown the in- 
ability of the unaided intellect to know, By their 
i.e. to find out, God. Religious in- Pi^iiosopiiy. 
quiry, and one might almost say the same of 
ethical, was carried to the utmost limit, but only 
to prove the fruitlessness of the search. Sec- 
ondly, Greek Philosophy, by its careful and dis- 
criminative use of concepts, its scrutiny of mental 
processes, and its multiplication of terms for the 
expression of different shades of thought, sup- 
plied Christianity with a needed terminology. 
Without this terminology. Christian ideas could 
have had no adequate expression. The changes 
wrought in the soul of man could have been 
neither fully nor intelligibly described. The 
Hebrew or Aramaic vocabulary was too meagre, 
and would have been unintelligible outside of 
Palestine. The Latin tongue was too inflexible, 
and too scantily supplied wdth terms descrip- 
tive of mental action and emotion. Neither the 
Hebrews nor the Romans had attained to any 
clearly definable psychology, or had given any 
attention to philosophy, and consequently could 
offer almost no terms such as Christianity had 
special need of. 

But it was a still wider service than this that 



1 1 8 CHRISTIAN E VIDENCES. 

the Greek language rendered to Christianity. 
By their I^ fact, it was Only as a part of this 
Language, bj-oader service that, through the ma- 
nipulations of Philosophy, it was enabled to pro- 
vide Christianity with its needed terminology. 
When the Christian Era began, Greek was both a 
written and a spoken tongue alike at Jerusalem, 
at Damascus, at Rome, throughout the cities 
of Asia Minor, and at Alexandria in Egypt. 
Roman arms had conquered Greece, but Greece 
in return had, with her language, philosophy, 
and art, mastered Rome. So thoroughly had 
the Jews, scattered in the foreign cities, become 
accustomed to the use of Greek, that in Pales- 
tine they were known as Hellenists or Grecized 
Jews. For more than a century and a half be- 
fore Christ, the Hebrew Scriptures had been 
translated into Greek. This translation, known 
as the Septuagint, had accomplished the double 
result of familiarizing the Jews with the use of 
Greek in their religion, and of making known to 
the heathen, especially the proselytes, the moral 
law and the ritual of Judaism. No language 
then in use was accordingly so well fitted to be 
the one in which the New Testament Scriptures 
should be written. Usage had prepared no 
other for so clear an expression of Christian 
ideas, and no other was so universally used at 
the great centres of population. Indeed, no 
other language then existed w^hich could have 



PRE PAR A TION FOR CHRIS TIANITY, 1 1 9 

served the ends, and met the various needs, of 
Christianity. Absolutely indispensable as Greek 
was in the introduction of Christianity, not less 
necessary was it in the propagation of it. All 
Christian literature for the first two centuries, at 
least all now extant, was in Greek, and, so far as 
we know, the preaching of the Gospel during 
these centuries was in the same tongue. And 
when one traces the process through which the 
Greek tongue was prepared for its Christian 
offices, it must be an obtuse or a perverse intel- 
lect that fails to discover in it evidences of the 
foreseeing and controlling agency of a Supreme 
Intelligence. 

But no sooner had the Christian religion be- 
gun to make itself known among the nations as 
distinctive and separate from all others, Greek op- 
than the Greeks, who had done so g^'^^gt" 
much to make the introduction and ^^y- 
propagation of it possible, treated it with scorn. 
The heralds of it were " babblers,'* and their 
preaching v/as '' foolishness." Salvation through 
One who had been condemned and publicly 
executed was to them the height of absurdity. 
The resurrection was '' the hope of worms.*' A 
blessed immortality was the dream of poets. 
Seeing the futility of its derision, Greek Philos- 
ophy tried its flattery. Proposing to assist 
Christian teachers to an understanding and a 
rationalized statement of some of the profound- 



I20 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES, 

est and most mysterious of the truths of their 
religion, it decoyed them into the construction of 
systems of Gnosticism. In attempting to philos- 
ophize these truths into doctrines that should be 
regarded as matters of real knowledge, instead 
of belief, they elaborated the most dangerous 
and actually damaging heresy that the early 
Church was called to encounter. In spite of 
the efforts of Greek Philosophy to thwart the 
ends it had just subserved, the Divine Hand 
made the ends certain to be fulfilled, and, in ful- 
filling them, gave evidence to every one who 
will see, that Christianity is a religion of Divine, 
and not alone of human origin. The same Di- 
vine prevision and power that had so plainly 
prepared the Greek tongue and philosophy to 
subserve Christian ends, were displayed with 
equal plainness in bringing the ends to pass, in 
spite of every obstruction that human perversity 
could devise. 

Seciion III. — Preparation by the Romans and 
THE Roman Empire. 

This, in the order of time, was subsequent to 
that of both the preceding. It also affected the 
Preparation beginning and progress of Christianity 
bytheRo- in ways very different from those of 

mans, politi- 

caiandin- Cither of the othcrs. The preparatory 
stitutionai. ggj.^;^,^ Qf ^^ f^j-gl- ^^g distinctively 

religious; that of the second was philosophical 



PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY, 121 

and literary ; that of the third was political and 
institutional. The Romans prepared for the 
coming of Christ, and for the diffusion of His 
religion, in three ways : — 

I. By subjecting and direfully oppressing the 
Jews. The desperate and fruitless struggles of 
the latter for liberty ended only in their being 
more remorselessly trodden into the dust. On 
the verge of despair, they bethought themselves 
of the Divine deliverance which had been vouch- 
safed to their forefathers, and of the promises 
that had been made to these of protection for 
their descendants. With eager eyes they 
scanned the words of the old prophets in 
search of some ground of hope for relief. 
The more they studied the prophets, Roman op- 
the stronger became their conviction thrjews^ 
that their only hope was in the promised ^^^^f*^^ 
Messiah. Apocalyptic literature cen- DeUverer. 
tring in the Messianic idea rapidly multiplied, 
so that when Jesus came, the universal atmos- 
phere of religious thought was in motion with 
Messianic expectations. False conceptions of 
the expected Messiah springing from too literal 
an interpretation of prophetic imagery doubt- 
less prevailed, but popular expectations were 
none the less inflamed by them. Without these 
vivid expectations it is more than doubtful if 
Jesus, so unlike the idea that had been formed 
of the Messiah, could have gained for Himself 



T 2 2 CHRISTIAN E VIDEATCES. 

a hearing. In all this the Divine Hand used the 
Romans to make the Jews ready for their ap- 
pointed, but their misunderstood Deliverer. 

2. As masters of the then known world, the 
Romans had brought all nations and tribes 
Roman gov- within their reach under one supreme 
gl^pro- government. Over them all, the au- 
tection. thority of Roman law, with such slight 
modifications as a recognition of local customs 
and institutions made politic, was unyieldingly 
enforced. Under this authority Roman citi- 
zenship, whether a birthright or purchased, 
everywhere gave to its possessor assurance of 
protection and safety. Of this protection the 
first preachers of the Gospel among the Gen- 
tiles, like the Apostle Paul and his associates, 
were not slow to avail themselves. Without it 
there is good reason for believing their course 
would have ended at its beginning. 

3. In the vast extent of the Roman Empire 
it was indispensable that communication be- 

^ ., tween its distant provinces and the cen- 

Gave facil- ^ ^ 

ity of com- tral scat of authority and power should 

munication. - . ,. m 1 -r» 1 

be as immediate as possible. Jbroad 
and solid roads were accordingly built for the 
march of armies and the transfer of military 
equipments. Roman control of the Mediter- 
ranean and adjacent seas also gave protection to 
maritime commerce. Without the great roads, 
and without the safety on both the roads and 



PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY, 12 3 

the seas, which only the authority of the Em- 
pire could give, the heralds of the cross could 
have made little or no progress. The Almighty 
Power that had made the Egyptian and the 
Assyrian subservient in their day to the Divine 
Will in all their relations with the Israelites, made 
also the Roman in his day subservient to the 
same Will in opening the way for the coming 
and the spread of the religion for which alone 
the Israelites in all their career had been shielded 
and disciplined. 

But when the Messiah came, for whose com- 
ing and whose religion the Romans had unwit- 
tingly done so much to prepare the way, the 
supreme power of the Empire was at once ex- 
erted to destroy both Him and His religion. 

1. This supreme authority lent itself to Jew- 
ish malignity in crucifying the Messiah, though 
the sole representative of that authority 

in Palestine frankly admitted that he thecmci- 
could discern no just cause for His 
execution. The supreme authority of the em- 
pire was thus vainly exerted to strangle Chris- 
tianity at its birth. 

2. The Romans also killed the two chief Apos- 
tles, Peter and Paul, and afterwards, slaugh- 
tering like sheep hundreds of thou- ,, 

sands of other disciples of Jesus, did two chief 
their utmost to stamp out of existence 

every vestige of the new and hated religion. 

3. The Emperors prohibited, under penalties 



124 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

of torturing deaths, every form of profession of 
Prohibited Christianity. The fanatical zeal of the 
Chris- people against Christians could be sat- 

tianity. t ^ , . , , 

isned with no measures less strmgent. 
The kind-hearted and liberal-minded Trajan 
found it extremely difficult in the face of this 
zeal to arrest persecutions and to exercise clem- 
ency in the treatment of Christians. Hadrian 
was compelled to yield to it. Even the large- 
minded and large-hearted Marcus Aurelius, 
whose ** Meditations *' abound in sentiments of 
humanity and charity, could put to death with- 
out hesitation men of the most blameless lives, 
like Justin Martyr, whose only offence was loy- 
alty to Christ and His religion. Surely if any- 
thing could have exterminated Christianity in 

these earlier centuries, Roman perse- 

Christian- ^ 

itypre- cution could liavc done it. But instead 

served 

because of exterminating it, the fiercer the per- 
divine. secution the more rapidly spread the 
religion, and the deeper were struck its roots. 
Nor can this be explained as the natural result 
of persecution. Nothing less than a Presence 
within the religion, and a Wisdom and a Power 
presiding over and directing it in its course, can 
explain its final triumph. The same Divine 
Being who had put upon the Christian religion 
at its birth the stamp of its Divine origin, stamped 
it anew, by giving it its victory over all its foes, 
as a religion He had Himself given to men and 
would Himself protect. 



INHERENT QUALITIES OF CHRISTIANITY, 1 25 



CHAPTER III. 

DIVINE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY AS SEEN 
IN THREE OF ITS INHERENT QUALITIES. 

These qualities are, first, its power of self- 
recuperation ; secondly, its impulse to self-devel- 
opment; thirdly, its capacity for self- TheChurtdi 
expansion. These are the qualities directed by 

^ -^ an indwell- 

not of an artificial scheme of religion, inginteiii- 

nor of a religion that the religious in- ^^^*^^' 
stincts of mankind are sufficient to account for, 
but of a living organism animated and directed 
by an indwelling and a self-conscious Intelligence. 
This organism is known in the Sacred Scrip- 
tures under the comprehensive titles of '' king- 
dom of God,'' *'the bod>; of Christ" ^' an 
habitation of God through the Spirit,'* *'the 
Church of the Living God." Its mode of mani- 
festing itself is through a visible, tangible, active 
organization known as the Church. Of the 
inherent qualities of this organization under the 
title of the Church, we will notice the most com- 
prehensive and important. 



I 26 CHRISTIAN E VIDENCES. 



Section I. — Its Self-recuperative Power. 

This is its power to recover itself from every 
disaster, whatever may have caused it, — a power 
Preserved to rccoup itsclf whcn betrayed and de- 
initsperna. gp^jj^^^ j^y aHcn alliances such as a 

union of Church and State, — or when decoyed 
into perils by false or by misguided friends. 
Examples of the exercise of this self-recuper- 
ative power in the progress of the Church along 
the centuries, have been indefinitely numerous 
and unmistakably clear. To enumerate them 
would be virtually to write the History of Chris- 
tianity. Sometimes the perils into which the 
Church has been plunged have been such as 
apparently to threaten the continuance of 
Christianity as a vital power on the earth. Only 
specimens of these perils can here be enumer- 
ated. 

I. At the beginning of the second century 
the Apostles were gone ; there was no canon of 
Perils of their writings for the guidance of the 
days^o?the churches they had planted ; and there 
Church. were no religious teachers or leaders 
competent to take up their work and to carry it 
forward. Heresies abounded. An overesti- 
mate of the merit of martyrdom begat in weak 
minds a fanatical and most dangerous craving 
to be martyrs. They purposely irritated the 
heathen that they might thereby insure their 



INHERENT QUALITIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 12/ 

own martyrdom. Christianity was in imminent 
peril. Its pure and gentle spirit was threatened 
with extinction by a rude and obtrusive fanat- 
icism. The recuperative power of the indwell- 
ing and divinely given Spirit of the Church, the 
Holy Ghost, working in and through a select 
few, saved it. 

2. The Church was again in extreme peril 
from the overwhelming influx of half-Christian- 
ized heathen under Constantine, the Periisfrom 
first of the Christian Emperors, near i?^^.^^ 

^ Chriatian- 

the beginning of the fourth century, ized 
The re-creative Spirit energized the 
hearts of the people, and in due time, at Nicaea, 
the Church at its first General Council, amid 
violent controversy, expressed itself in the for- 
mulation of the Nicene Creed. 

3. Papal corruptions, that from the sixth 
century prevailed for nearly a thousand years, 
were as deadly a burden as the Church papaicor- 
could bear and still survive. The re- "^p^^^^"* 
vival of learning in the fourteenth and fifteenth 
centuries with a restoration of the ancient liter- 
atures of Greece and Rome to their long lost 
supremacy, brought with it also a revival of the 
old spirit of heathenism which these literatures 
embodied. The so-called Humanism of the new 
learning carried mildew and blight into the 
heart of the Papal Court, as well as into the 
hearts of not a few leaders of the Church else- 



1 2 8 CHRISTIAN E VIDENCES. 

where, outwardly threatening the very life of the 
Church itself. But the divinely re-creating 
Spirit was at work in His own quiet but effective 
ways through all the dreary centuries. Some- 
times it was a pious monk who was moved to 
action and to utterance of his emotions in 
hymns that in various translations still linger in 
the hearts and on the lips of saintly souls. Some- 
times it was a Thomas a Kempis who was in- 
spired to write an ^* Imitation of Christ/' over 
which worshipping souls still pore with godly 
enthusiasm. Again, it was some obscure scholar 
whose name has not survived, who was quick- 
ened into writing a condensed theology {Tlieo- 
logie Deiitschey Theologia Pectoris^, so full of 
the very marrow of the Gospel as to fill with 
profoundest satisfaction the souls of the most 
eminent of Christian scholars. And still again 
it was the same retrieving Spirit that incited 
Tauler, and Wycliffe, and other reformers be- 
fore the Reformation, to the utterance of burning 
words and the kindling of wide-spreading flames ; 
and it was the same Spirit that finally gave to 
Christianity the victory over Papal and other 
corruptions. 

4. Christianity has also, at different periods 
and in special localities, been affected disas- 
Misuseof trously by misuse of its doctrines, 
doctrines. Some of its fundamental truths, sev- 
ered from their relations to other and qualifying 



INHERENT QUALITIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 129 

truths, have at times been magnified to a degree 
that has transformed them into deadly errors. 
Two or three instances of this may here suffice. 
Thus, Divine Sovereignty has sometimes been 
so exalted as to make Christianity a system of 
fatalism, instead of a living interposition of God 
in behalf of man. Again, the position of man 
in the scheme of creation, and his natural ca- 
pacity for attaining it, have been so set forth as 
virtually to make God to be no more than the 
equal of man in the moral and religious move- 
ments of the world. The rescuing Spirit has 
always in due time intervened. At one time 
Latitudinarianism in England was carried to the 
point of disparaging possible religious convic- 
tions as at least needless, if not mischievous. 
Religion almost lost its vital power. The re- 
newing Spirit through the Wesleys and White- 
field brought back to it a new and vigorous life. 
In New England the Half-way Covenant came 
near bringing spiritual death to the churches. 
The same Spirit, through Jonathan Edwards, 
interposed to save them. In Germany Ration- 
alism did its deadly work. The never-failing 
Spirit through Schleiermacher and his associates 
wrought effectively in repairing the ruins. 

5. The Church has also often fallen into perils 
no less dangerous than those already mentioned, 
when it has persisted in usages, rites. Formalism 
formulas of doctrine, and modes of life a^^^^^*- 

9 



130 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES, 

from which the spirit that gave them form and 
meaning has long since departed. FormaHsm 
and cant are among the deadhest foes of Chris- 
tianity; and when the recuperating Spirit suc- 
ceeds in breaking these up, and, to the great 
horror of formaHsts, in revolutionizing the whole 
existing type of religion, it never fails to bring 
to the Church new life and power. 

And this recuperation of Christianity, these 
rescues of it from its perils, have not been due 
Recovery ^^ ^^^X intelligible law of natural evolu- 
andup- tion, but in every case to a recurrence 

ward move- 
ment of the and re-recurrence, under guidance of 

Church. ., • c • "i. ^ ^1 

its own ever renewmg bpirit, to the 
personal Christ, and to the Holy Scriptures 
through which the mind and will of Christ are 
revealed, and the mind and will of the delinquent 
Church are enlightened and quickened. 

And in every instance of recovery from tem- 
porary decline, it has been not a mere reinstate- 
ment of Christianity in its former condition 
that has been accomplished, but a movement 
to a higher position and an exhibition of ever 
increasing evidence that a Divine Wisdom and 
Power first gave it to mankind and still per- 
petuates it among men. 



INHERENT QUALITIES OF CHRISTIANITY, 131 



Section II. — Its Power of Self- Development. 

A second inherent quality of Christianity is 
its ceaseless impulse to disclose progressively 
the fullness of its meaning, its spirit, its Three 
power, and its resources. It does this ^^^devfi- 
in three ways : first, by developing op^e^it- 
itself as a body of moral and religious ideas ; 
secondly, by developing through progressive 
knowledge of its truths a constantly improving 
type of character in its adherents ; thirdly, 
through progressive knowledge of its truths 
and continuous improvement in its type of 
character, it develops and organizes for itself 
an ever increasing variety of effective forces. 
Fullness of truth and perfection of character 
were at the outset clearly exhibited in the Person 
of Christ, and through the development of these 
conjointly and historically in the personalities 
of the living Church there have been called into 
being the ever multiplying forces of the Church. 
The ideas, the character, and the agencies were 
all necessarily in forms determined by the age 
in which they originated. They embodied 
meanings deeper and broader than by any 
possibility could then be understood. Only 
by a process of unfolding running through 
many centuries could these meanings be de- 
veloped. 



132 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES, 

I. Development of Christian ideas. These as 
first given were definite and fixed, admitting 
Develop- of neither addition nor subtraction. 
Christian But they wcrc given in Oriental im- 
ideas. agcry and in metaphorical terms. To 

disentangle the meanings from this imagery, 
and to get them out of metaphor into literal 
statements, have required a succession of steps 
now easily traced in history along the Christian 
centuries. 

a. Progressive understanding of the Christian 

idea of God. This idea, so slowly apprehended, 

was e^iven by Christ, both in His own 

IdeaofGod. __ ^ , . tt- i t • 

rerson and m His words. It is com- 
plex, made up of various attributes. Of these 
attributes one or another at different periods has 
preponderated in the minds of men and distorted 
the whole conception. Thus at one time the Sov- 
ereignty of God has been so magnified that He 
has been made an arbitrary Despot, who was to 
be approached only remotely through symbolic 
services or through a series of intermediary 
agents. At another time justice has been made 
so to overtop every other attribute as to become 
the pivot on which the whole scheme of the 
universe has been conceived to turn. At an- 
other time every attribute has been submerged in 
benevolence. The action and reaction of these 
one-sided conceptions of Deity have led to a 
minute examination of the grounds of each, and 



INHERENT QUALITIES OF CHRISTIANITY, 1 33 

of the different points of view from which they 
were derived. Oniy by degrees, through com- 
parison and combination, has there emerged 
what is now so generally known as the Chris- 
tian idea of God, — that comprehensive idea of 
the Fatherhood of God in which the most op- 
posite attributes are united and reconciled, and 
which includes the idea of the eternal filial 
relation of man. 

b. Development of the Christian idea of man. 
No single text of the New Testament teaches 
it ; only by critical analysis of a s^reat 

^ J -^ J ^ Idea of man. 

variety of texts can it be definitely as- 
certained. In one class of texts we have a pic- 
ture of man as he was before he became con- 
scious of his guilt; in another we have a view 
of him after knowing that he was a transgressor ; 
in a third class we see him as he is when made 
a new creature in Christ. Christianity sets forth 
in these and other texts man's primal, essential 
relation of sonship ; that sin is a progressive 
alienation from the Father; that it is destructive 
of that blessedness which should attend the nor- 
mal relation of Divine Father and created child ; 
and that this awful rupture of normal relations 
has its origin in man's perverted self-seeking. 
All the terms used for sin as an inward state 
contain this idea. In expounding Moses, Christ 
teaches that sin is in the desire, not in the overt 
act. 



1 3 4 CHRISTIAN E VIDENCES. 

Christianity teaches that holiness, on the other 
hand, is an eternal beatific advance toward per- 
fect union with the Father. It exemplifies a 
perfect manhood in the person and life of Jesus, 
and enjoins it in His command, ** Be ye perfect, 
as your Father in heaven is perfect/' This ideal 
type of humanity is exhibited alone by Chris- 
tianity. It is not found in the Old Testament, 
nor in any pre-Christian philosophy. The truths 
Christ taught are not the deductions of reason, 
but the flashings forth of His own Divine con- 
sciousness and His Divine knowledge of the 
souls of men; and there has been through the 
centuries a gradual unfolding of these truths to 
the Christian consciousness. They have revealed 
man to himself. Becoming thus self-evident and 
self-convincing, they appeal ever more and more 
to the consciences and hearts of men. 

c. Progressive understanding of the redemp- 
tive work of Christ. Until the fifth century, 
_ , the various aspects of man's nature and 

Redemp- ^ 

tivework relations had not so engaged the at- 

of Christ. . . r i_ 1- 

tention of believers as to excite con- 
troversy. But from the time of Pelagius and 
Augustine, discussion never ceased; out of the 
contests have arisen the various theories of 
the atonement from Origen, through Anselm, 
Lombard, Grotius, and others, down to the 
present day. One theory has superseded an- 
other, and each new aspect of the truth has 



INHERENT QUALITIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 1 35 

added something to the apprehension of it. But 
while it is true that these successive theories 
have looked at the doctrine from a progressively 
wider angle of vision, yet it also remains true 
that the endeavor to set forth a complete ratio- 
nale of the atonement has burdened Christianity 
w^ith errors, w^hich all through the centuries 
have obscured the faith, or offended the intelli- 
gence, or oppressed the hearts, of devout Chris- 
tian believers. The New Testament simply sets 
forth the fact and the effects of the atonement. 
Our theories as to the Divine process, however 
useful, are necessarily only imperfect ways of 
explaining a Divine method which is above and 
beyond all human philosophy. The effects of 
Chrisfs atoning life and death, as set forth in 
the New Testament, are a present salvation from 
the supreme love of self, and hence from the 
love of sin, a practical belief in the Fatherhood 
of God and in the brotherhood of man, and a 
sure faith in the Holy Spirit at work in the hearts 
of men for their final redemption from sin. 

The attempts to construct a rational theology 
on purely philosophical bases have always ended 
in contradiction and confusion, or in Theology 
flat negations. Neither Christ nor His stmcted on 
Apostles ever attempted to explain the foYopMcaf " 
inexplicable ; and all subsequent efforts ^^ses. 
to do this have only more and more taught us 
the great truth, that, in the w^hole realm of ex- 



136 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES, 

istence, wherever the Divine and human touch, 
there must of necessity be mystery. The re- 
generating process on the human side is clear. 
Man, feehng himself debased, a slave to sin, finds 
that he cannot escape the thraldom ; recogniz- 
ing his helplessness, he casts himself on Jesus 
Christ and finds peace. This divine remedy, 
faith in a crucified Christ, was ** to the Jews a 
stumbling-block and to the Greeks foolishness.'* 
But to the renewed man Christ has become '* the 
power of God and the wisdom of God/' He 
may not be able to explain how his redemption 
has been accomplished, but he cannot gainsay 
the fact. He is a new creature in Christ Jesus. 
By actual experience of regeneration, men know 
it to be an eternal truth of God. About the 
beginning of the eighteenth century, this ex- 
perience, through a progressive recognition of 
the work of the Holy Spirit on the hearts of 
men, was formulated into the theological doc- 
trine of Regeneration. Thus, with a clearer 
recognition of the limitations of the human 
understanding, and of the agency of the Holy 
Spirit, has there gradually emerged a profounder 
conception of the redemptive work of Christ. 

2. Progressive improvement in the type of 
Christian character. The new kind of goodness 
Improve- which Christ in His own character ex- 
^^oT hibited, and which He in His teachings 
character, get forth, notwithstanding the many 



INHERENT QUALITIES OF CHRISTIANITY, 1 37 

perversions and distortions which at times have 
deformed it, has been gradually penetrating the 
hearts and controlling the lives of men. Its pro- 
gressive work through the centuries may be the 
more easily traced by noting some of the more 
striking forms which the Christian life has as- 
sumed. In the various orders of monasticism, 
in the different moral standards of the laity and 
the priesthood, in the laws and ranks of knight- 
hood, in the penances and purgations of the 
Roman Church, in the legalism of later Prot- 
estantism, in the puritanism of England and 
America, in the pietism of Germany, we see not 
only crudeness, extravagance, or one-sidedness, 
but also an earnest struggling for a higher type 
of Christian living; and in spite of perversions, 
exaggerations, and puerilities, we discover in the 
midst of rude or licentious civilizations an ever 
increasing desire for the ideal type of Christian 
character. 

The existing type in the Church at large, 
notwithstanding its imperfections, plainly sur- 
passes that of any previous age. It . 
expresses more fully that which was type of 
the central principle and ruling motive in the 
in the character of Jesus. This im- ^^^c^- 
proved type is illustrated in the change which 
has been wrought in all our social and civic 
institutions. Legislatures regarding the interests 
of laborers and children; the elevation of woman ; 



1 3 8 CHRISTIAN E VIDENCES, 

the abolition of slavery ; our courts of justice ; our 
penal regulations looking toward reform rather 
than vengeance ; — all these, and much else that 
might be mentioned, are only the exponents 
of the gradual elevation and purification by 
Christianity of individual character; and along 
with the Hospitals, Orphan Asylums, Homes, 
and all the various appliances for helping the 
unfortunate, they are just so many signs of that 
Divine principle of love which is the constituent 
principle of all that is highest and best in Chris- 
tian character. 

3. Christianity has wonderfully developed its 

resources for aggressive work. This may be 

seen to-day in the ore^anized forces at 

Resources ^ "^ ° 

foraggres- work in our own country and else- 
sivewor . ^^j^^j.^^ Sunday Schools, which devel- 
oped in England out of the Ragged Schools, 
are the growth of the last hundred years; only 
about thirty years ago they were introduced by 
a gentleman of Brooklyn into Germany, where 
they have continued to spread. The Brother- 
hood of St. Andrew, originating with a few 
young men in a church in Chicago, has enlisted 
thousands of eager men all over the country in 
Christian work; the Society of Christian En- 
deavor, including both men and women, is 
bringing into activity a vast amount of other- 
wise unused power. ** Revivalism,'' with its 
various methods, including that new form of it 



INHERENT QUALITIES OF CHRISTIANITY, 1 39 

called '* Missions/' in the Episcopal Church, has 
brought truth home to a multitude of con- 
sciences. Missionary Agencies, Home and For- 
eign, are always multiplying their forces. The 
Young Men's Christian Association, with its 
numerous beneficent activities, is another mighty 
agency which Christianity is using for its pro- 
gress in the world. The Salvation Army, that 
miracle of modern times, which has penetrated 
more deeply into the sin and wretchedness of 
cities, perhaps, than any other Christian agency, 
has met its reward in raising to spiritual life 
multitudes whom society had despaired of as 
beyond all possible moral resurrection. All 
these and many others, including that power- 
ful agency, the Religious Press, have developed 
their strength for the same divine end, — to raise 
the fallen, to help the weak, to feed the hungry, 
to instruct the ignorant, and to preach the Good 
News to all who will hear. But it must not be 
forgotten that all this Christian work is indi- 
vidual work, — the product of the faith and zeal 
of men working individually, — and that the his- 
tory of Christian organizations shows that they 
multiply and prove effective in exact propor- 
tion to the work of the Holy Spirit of God on 
the hearts of individual Christians. 



140 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES, 



Section III. — Expansiveness of the Spirit of 
Christianity. 

The difference between body and soul is uni- 
versally recognized. The distinction between 
Spirit and letter and spirit is not less real, though 
cMst^n- ^^^^ commonly apprehended. The let- 
ity. ter, like the body, is the outward form 

of an inner life which it attempts to declare, but 
cannot adequately represent The letter is ap- 
preciable by the senses, the spirit only through 
the soul's experience. Christianity is known to 
us through both its letter and its spirit. The 
former in its facts and statements is historically 
and unalterably fixed ; the latter has always 
been, and still is, progressively experienced. 
Limited by the letter of its historic facts, no 
progress of the race can outstrip the expansive- 
ness of its spirit. It keeps pace with, and appro- 
priates to itself, and sanctifies to its own ends, 
the spirit of all truth, of all real beauty, and of 
all moral goodness. Thus the spirit of Chris- 
tianity is in harmony, — 

I. With the spirit of Science and Philosophy. 
Science and philosophy are two distinct meth- 
Spiritin ods of humau inquiry, each possessing 
wl^the its own distinctive spirit, and with that 
sciTnce^and ^P^^^^ imbuiug its votarics. Thus the 
Philosophy, spirit of scicucc is a self-sacrificing 
search for the demonstrably real. Its most dis- 



INHERENT QUALITIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 141 

tinguishing characteristic is intellectual hon- 
esty. Philosophy is equally honest and earnest 
in its endeavors to bring the real and the true 
into direct relation with human life. There may 
be both scientists and philosophers who are not 
true to the spirit of their callings. Preposses- 
sions, pride of intellect, and self-conceit may 
mislead them. But with the genuine spirit of 
science and philosophy Christianity is always in 
accord, — has always found them, and, it is safe 
to say, always will find them, among her most 
serviceable handmaids. The absolutely real and 
true, whether of science or philosophy, can never 
be otherwise than absolutely harmonious with 
religion. 

2. With the spirit of Civilization. Civiliza- 
tion, necessarily, has its outward and visible 
forms of law, government, social regu- jj^jiarnioiiy 
lations, conventionalities, and civilities; with the 

I ..-..,.. spirit of 

but the spirit of civilization can be civiiiza- 
known and appreciated by those only *^°^' 
who have lived in its atmosphere. Its outward 
forms are necessary to control and subdue, and 
imbue humanity with the spirit of it; but its 
spirit is subtile and refining, and has its seat in 
the soul of man; and it is capable of almost 
unlimited advance from its elementary stages. 
The farther it advances, the more readily does 
the spirit of Christianity assimilate it. Only 
under a Christianized civilization can Christian- 
ity achieve its best results for man. 



142 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

3. With the spirit of Beauty, — Beauty in na- 
ture and in art Nature in her phases and in 

her productions appeals to something 
spirit of in man which we call his sense of 
^^^ ^' beauty. The sense becomes acute 
and refining in proportion to the degree of one's 
aesthetic culture. Imitation of beauty in nature 
has given us the fine arts; in its metaphorical 
sense, it is applied to intellectual products 
(Shelley's Hymn to Intellectual Beauty) and 
to moral character (beauty of holiness). The 
spirit of beauty in all its forms may attain to an 
extreme degree of dignity, delicacy, and refine- 
ment ; and the spirit of Christianity, which sym- 
pathizes with it at every stage, surpasses it in 
giving the finishing charm to its highest pro- 
ductions, which it then appropriates as means 
of moral and spiritual culture. 

4. With the spirit of Worship in all its forms. 
The spirit of Christianity is expansive enough to 
be at home in, and to exert its power on, every 
form of ritual, from the most elaborate, imposing, 
and gorgeous, down to the tamest, baldest, and 
most barren. One worshipper may be just as 
devout and spiritual-minded in the use of the 
former, as another in the use of the latter. 

5. With a true Catholicity. It is expansive 
enough to admit of sincere and hearty fellowship 
Spirit of wi^h all disciples of Christ, however 
catholicity, narrow-miudcd may be the sects into 



INHERENT QUALITIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 1 43 

which they are divided, and however rigid and 
sharply drawn may be their lines of separation. 

A religion expansive enough in its spirit to 
advance and harmonize with the spirit of sci- 
ence, philosophy, civilization, and art, to main- 
tain a vigorous life under any ritual and no 
ritual, and to override in its fellowship all the 
hedges and barriers of the narrowest sectarian- 
ism, gives good evidence of having originated 
with the Father of the spirits of all flesh, and of 
being a religion which will eventually command 
the allegiance of the world. 



144 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES, 



CHAPTER IV. 

DIVINE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY, AS SEEN 
IN THE COMPLETENESS OF ITS SYSTEM 
OF MORAL AND RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLES. 

1. The moral and religious are but two sides 
of one body of truth. That the two sides 
Moral and may be separately considered, and yet 
two^sidesof neither one of them wholly separated 
one truth, from the other, is fully comprehen- 
sible. Science may show that the principles of 
morality are grounded in natural laws, or are 
constitutive of personal being, and do not have 
their origin in the Sovereign arbitrary will of 
God ; and psychology may show the principles 
of religion to be in absolute accord with every 
law and principle of the human soul. But the 
utmost that either science or philosophy can do 
is to confirm, each in its own way, what Christian 
revelation has taught ; they cannot improve 
upon its teaching. 

2. After the most exhaustive analysis and the 
most exact synthesis of the moral and religious 
,, , ^ principles of the New Testament, these 

Moral and ^ ^ 

religious are found to be so correlated and co- 
ha^onf-^ ordinated one to another as to consti- 
°^^' tute an harmonious and unified whole. 



MORAL AND RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLES, 1 45 

The ablest and acutest intellects have thus far 
failed to point out disharmony or defect. 

3. The religious principles of the New Testa- 
ment have furnished the materials for the pro- 
foundest and most complete Philosophy pj^iiosophy 
of Relis^ion yet constructed, and no o±' Religion 

, . . fo^nd in 

philosophy of religion has yet been New Testa- 
thought out which in the slightest de- ^^^** 
gree invalidates New Testament teachings, or 
has furnished a system that can be properly 
called more rational. Natural science may not 
know how, with its physical tests, to admit the 
facts of the incarnation, the Trinity, the atone- 
ment, and the resurrection; but a profound phi- 
losophy of religion finds them to be indispen- 
sable factors. 

4. It is not to be forgotten that a philosophy 
of religion was something of which the writers 
of the New Testament were entirely ^ ^ ^ 

•^ But not 

innocent. They had no such philos- known to 
ophy of their own, and they never 
dreamed of any such that might be deduced 
from their writings in after generations. They 
wrote either as historians or as dogmatic teach- 
ers, but each according to his own divine en- 
lightenment. There is no evidence whatever 
that they wrote either with an individual or with 
a concerted purpose to develop any kind of 
philosophy or system. Yet unwittingly they 
laid down essential principles. God guided 

10 



146 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

them, and ** they builded better than they 
knew." 

5. Neither is it to be forgotten that there ex- 
isted no a priori system of doctrines, either in 
j^o a priori ^^ minds of the public or of indi- 
system of yiduals, which the New Testament was 

doctrines 

held by written to illustrate. Such a system 
New^Testa- IS discernible in the New Testament, 
ment. ^j^j ^^^ ]^^ Constructed out of its writ- 

ings, but only after a minute and critical study 
of these as a whole; just as the science of Ge- 
ology, for example, can be constructed only 
after a minute and careful study of all the facts 
of nature gathered from the earth's surface or 
extracted from its crust; or a science of Soci- 
ology can be constructed only after a careful 
collection, critical analysis, and classification of 
all the facts of human society. 

6. That nine men so different in intellectual 
endowments and acquirements and in natural 
Complete temperament as were the writers of the 
of their Ncw Tcstamcut, working each on his 
thou|h*^' own independent line of thought and 
working actiou, should havc so entirely accorded 

indepen- 
dently, in all their moral and religious concep- 
tions as to furnish a completely harmonious 
system of theological and ethical thought, can 
be rationally accounted for only on the theory 
that they were all Divinely guided, and that they 
have left us the records of a religion which origi- 
nated in the omniscient mind of God. 



FITNESS TO BECOME UNIVERSAL. 1 47 



CHAPTER V. 

DIVINE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY PROVED 
BY ITS FITNESS TO BECOME THE ONE 
UNIVERSAL RELIGION. 

Christianity bears the unmistakable marks 
of the climate, of the age, and of the people where 
it originated. Its records are full of Oriental 
imagery and of Oriental hyperbole. It none 
the less shows its fitness to be universal. 

1. A religion which is to be universal must 
be one whose doctrinal principles (^priitcipid) 
cannot be undermined or overthrown a religion 
by knowleds^e derived from any other *o^©Tiiii- 

, versal must 

source. The Sciences and Philoso- becon- 
phies have not only not invalidated any auTthe/ 
of the truths of Christianity, but have *^*^- 
served to confirm them. 

2. A universal religion must be able to vindi- 
cate its conceptions of the natures of both God 
and man at the bar of human reason. Must have 
Reason was given to men to be used, ofGod^d 
and Christianity has stood the test. '*^^- 
Christian conceptions of God and man, as found 
in the New Testament, not only now command 
the assent of reason, but are used to furnish the 



148 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

basis of theories which are proposed as substi- 
tutes for Biblical Christianity. 

3. A universal religion must not only set up 
a perfect standard of character for man's attain- 
Musthave Hicnt, but it must meet the needs of 
suntod of ^^^^) his fears, his weaknesses, his 
character, wauts. It has furnished the one in the 
Person and commands of its Divine Author, 
and the other by its precious promises and offers 
of Divine help. 

4. A religion for the whole human race must, 
in all its processes, whether in raising men to 
Its laws its standard or in its cultus, accord 
cord with strictly with the known laws of men- 
kno°^^^ tal action, i. e. with the demonstrably 
laws. clear requirements of pyschology. The 
Christian religion pre-eminently among all re- 
ligions does this, though originating among a 
people little given to a study of their mental 
processes. This agreement of Christianity with 
the laws of pyschology is becoming increas- 
ingly clear. 

5. A universal religion must, in its whole 
spirit, requirements, and methods, be capable 
Must keep ^^ keeping pace with the progress of 
pace with the race, and, instead of being out- 

thepro- 

gressof grown, must ever lead as guide and 
e race. patron of all good learning and art, 
and as an inspirer to all pure and noble living. 
In these respects, among all nations Christianity 
leads the van. 



FITNESS TO BECOME UNIVERSAL, 1 49 

6. A universal religion must be able to make 
itself a home in all climates, in all stages of 
barbarism or civilization, and under all Adaptable 
forms of government. Christianity has *° ^^ ^^" 
abundantly proved its power of adapt^- andcii- 
tion to all these conditions, never failing ^^*®^- 
to elevate and refine, working always from within 
outward, from its own centre towards the better- 
ment of its environment and the overcoming of 
adverse forces. 



1 5 O CHRISTIAN E VIDENCES. 



CHAPTER VI. 

INADEQUACY OF THE VISIBLE MEANS OF 
CHRISTIANITY TO THE PRODUCTION OF 
ITS ENDS. 

So far as we know, God never accomplishes 
His ends by fiat, but always through the use of 
Means used means or second causes. The means 
tianity employed in planting Christianity were 
fitted to various and manifold. While they 

ends, yet -' 

inadequate, were specially fitted to the ends to be 
accomplished, they were in and by themselves 
wholly inadequate to the results produced. 

I. The Miracles of Jesus were specially well 
fitted to convince the world of His Divine com- 
mission. They appealed immediately 
Miracles. , / rr J 

to the senses, and so commanded atten- 
tion. They were wrought independently of all 
known law, and were clearly not the result of 
human might or skill. They thus compelled 
faith in their Author as One exercising Divine 
power, and in the truth of His teachings. To 
the same end the apostles received from Him 
*^ authority,*' along with their commission, to 
work miracles. Prophecy was equally well 
suited to its own ends. 



VISIBLE MEANS INADEQUATE. 151 

2. The truths of Christianity, both ethical and 
religious, pertaining both to God and man, were 
exactly suited to the work of influen- _ ^, 

•^ ... Truths. 

cing to an acceptance of Christianity. 
All truth, simply as truth, is fitted to persuade to 
the end contemplated by it. As real existences, 
men instinctively accept the real and reject the 
unreal or false. Christianity as a revelation of 
the real is pre-eminently fitted to persuade men. 

3. Man has many instinctive fears and yearn- 
ings. Christianity abounds in considerations 
and promises suited to allay the one 

, • r 1 1 T • Promises. 

and to satisfy the other. Its promises 

are accompanied with positive assurances of 

ability to fulfil. 

4. The demonstrable certainty of immortality 
given by the resurrection of Jesus, coupled with 
the assurance of final awards as results immor- 
of the earthly life, have secured to *aHty. 
Christianity the most eff*ective power yet pos- 
sessed by any religion known among men for 
determining to righteousness of life. 

5. Christianity, honestly accepted and com- 
plied with, produces results individual and so- 
cial which command the approval of Restatsin 
all impartial and reasonable minds, present life- 
Its enlightening, regulating, and humane influ- 
ences on society are fitted to extend it to all the 
nations of the earth. 

A religion so richly qualified to meet all the 



152 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES, 

requirements necessary to the accomplishment 
Madeef- of its end ought not, one would think, 
hyKoiy ^ to meet with long delay in winning to 
Spirit. j|-g service the whole human race. But 
the miracles, the truths and the promises of 
Christianity, its assurance of a future life, and its 
provisions for a happy life in the present, have 
all proved inadequate means for the conversion 
of the world to righteousness. They have suc- 
ceeded so far only as they have been accom- 
panied and made effectual by some energizing 
spiritual power. They have won, and still win, 
the assent of the understanding, but another 
Power has always been requisite to secure the 
consent of the heart. To gain that consent has 
ever been and still is the prerogative of the 
renewing Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit 
works on men individually. Before society can 
feel the renovating influences of Christianity, 
men, one by one, must have felt the renewing 
power of the Holy Spirit. And the quickening 
Spirit alone can give vitalizing effect to the means 
Christianity uses. Through all time, in the first 
century as well as in this nineteenth century, 
this work of the Spirit is a seal on the soul of 
the believer and a sign to the eyes of the world, 
attesting Christianity to be a religion of Divine 
planting and of Divine perpetuation. 



CHRISTIAN TYPE OF CHARACTER, 153 



CHAPTER VII. 

PHILOSOPHY OF THE METHOD OF PRO- 
DUCING THE CHRISTIAN TYPE OF CHAR- 
ACTER. 

What the Christian type of character is, we 
have already seen. The Ideal of it was derived 
from the Real in the Person of Jesus. The ideal 
In Him centred every virtue, and of christian 

cliaTacte]? 

each virtue in Him harmonized with found in 
every other. The Christian type of 
character is a Christ-like character, consisting 
not of mere outward and negative, but of inward 
and positive virtues, — of inward purity or holi- 
ness, and of its outward realization or personal 
righteousness. The Christian type also includes 
alike the gentler virtues of patience and forbear- 
ance, and the hardier and sterner virtues of cour- 
age, and of whatever enters into true heroism. 
It is the high aim of Christianity to bring the 
human race into an approximation, as close as 
possible for finite and erring mortals, to the ideal 
perfection reached in the person of Jesus. It 
aims to make of each individual, and thus of the 
race, the utmost possible morally, socially, and 
intellectually. 

Now it is its production of character for both 



154 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

the individual and the race, which constitutes the 
Aim of crowning test of its worth, and thus of 
u^^tf^o"- ^^^ relative value and authority among 
duceinthe the religions of the world. In the final 

race that 

perfect and rapidly approachnig conflict of 
character. Christianity with the old religions of 
the world, the issue of the struggle will turn, not 
on its doctrines, but on the question, Is it fitted 
to do, and is it actually doing, the highest and 
best for man, — among all the religions, is Chris- 
tianity best adapted to piirify, elevate, and sanc- 
tify human character? 

The principles which philosophy discerns as 
working co-operatively and co-ordinately in the 
production of facts, are said to be philosophi- 
cal in their operation. There is thus seen to 
be a profound philosophy in the Divine method 
of producing Christian character. 

I. Christianity is profoundly and soundly phi- 
losophical in its initial steps in the production of 
Phiiosophi- Christian character. It begins by re- 

caiinits constructing the substructures of char- 
first steps ^ 
in the pro- actcr in the human heart. It does this 

christun by Supplanting selfishness, the root of 
character, ^jj ^^j]^ ^^^ implanting love of God and 

man. It imparts this love through conviction 
of personal guilt and a consciousness of the 
removal of this guilt by and through faith in 
the all-loving and self-sacrificing Christ. This 
was a philosophy too profound for the philo- ' 



CHRISTIAN TYPE OF CHARACTER, 1 55 

sophic Greeks to understand, but is too sound, 
too hygienic in its results on character, for any 
honest and intelligent psychologist to misunder- 
stand. 

2. Christianity is profoundly philosophical in 
its method of upbuilding character on the foun- 
dation which it lays in the heart of pj^ogopi^i. 
man. It utilizes the most effective of caiinits 

11 1 • • • 1 1-1 method of 

all the constructive prmciples which upi)uiidmg 
disclose themselves in the human soul, 
— the principle of faith. Every man becomes 
like the being or object he most thoroughly 
believes in and loves. Faith and love always 
co-exist, and conjointly reproduce in the believer 
the character of the one he most loves and be- 
lieves in. 

3. Profound philosophy is also seen in the 
moulding and uplifting influence of sympathy, 
communion, or fellowship, to which the Through 
Christian is introduced by believing in a^com-^ 
Christ, — communion with God, with ^^aunion. 
Christ the Saviour, Master, Example, and com- 
munion with all saints now living on earth or in 
heaven. The influence of this fellowship on 
character is distinctively Christian, and bears the 
stamp of a Divine Wisdom or Philosophy. 

4. The moulding influence of earthly disci- 
pline under the omniscient eye and guiding 
hand of God shows a more than human By earthly 
wisdom. Christianity alone taught that ^^ipi^^e- 



156 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

whom the Lord loves He chastens. Even Christ 
is said to have been made perfect through suf- 
fering. The whole history of the Church is a 
history of discipHne. The pride and folly of men 
within it have brought chastisement, repentance, 
reform, and a higher life ; and the persecutions 
of the world outside have given to it increased 
humility, devotion, and strength. The life of 
every individual man is a life of discipline; 
he makes plans, and God overturns thenl ; he 
stretches his hopes toward a larger future, and 
God's restraining hand is laid on him ; he looks 
forward to long and active usefulness, and health 
departs. Christianity alone teaches him that 
this severe discipline is from the hand of a lov- 
ing, watchful Father ; that it comes by the wise 
and tender mercy of God, educating him to be, 
like his Divine Master, humble in spirit, devoted 
to the work given him to do, and above all faith- 
ful in heart, — faithful even unto death. This 
is the Divine Philosophy of Christianity. 



INDEX. 



Arbitration due to Christianity, 109. 
Buddhism, 103. 

Cana, miracle at, discussed, 83. 

Canon law, 105. 

Christianity, its accordance with laws of human progress, an 
argument for its Divinity, 79; beneficent influence of, 81- 
III ; said to be unfavorable to temperance, 82 ; said to make 
its appeal to selfishness, 86; said to perpetuate social ine- 
qualities, 87 ; said to be through its theology unfavorable to 
morality, 90; said to favor unduly the softer virtues, 91; 
positive benefits of, 98-1 11 ; its tendency to eradicate human 
bondage, 100; its influence on condition of women, loi ; its 
practical philanthropy, 102 ; its influence on jurisprudence 
and penology, 104; and on conducting of war, 109; the 
preparation which the Jews made for it, 113; that made by 
Greeks, 116; that by Romans, 120; its power of recuperation, 
126; of self-development, 131 ; of aggressive resourcefulness, 
138 ; its harmony with scientific and philosophic spirit, 140 ; 
with that of civilization, 141 ; with the Beautiful, 142 ; with 
all degrees of ritual, 142 ; is catholic, 142 ; its Divinity 
proved by completeness of its moral and religious principles, 
144-146 ; these rest on a profound philosophy, 145 ; inde- 
pendent of any theological system in minds of Apostles, 145 ; 
or of any a priori system elsewhere, 146; the harmony of 
nine writers of New Testament, a proof of Divine guidance, 
146; fit to become a universal religion, 147-149; inadequacy 
of visible means to produce its ends, a proof of its Divinity, 
150-152 ; work of Holy Spirit in connection with its accept- 
ance, a proof of its Divinity, 152; philosophical in its steps 
to form character, 153-156. 



IS8 INDEX, 

Christianity, objections to, arising from its identification with 
the Church, 93-98 ; aspects it assumes to world, 93. 

Church accused of leaguing with oppressors, 94; of persecut- 
ing for opinions, 95 ; of resisting Science and Philosophy, 96 ; 
of conniving at social and political wrongs, 97 ; existing type 
of, highest yet obtained, 137. 

Consciousness, popular, influenced by Christianity, 31. 

Evidences adduced by Jesus and his Apostles classified, 10. 

Evidences, Christian, their threefold division, 9; one of the most 
important of, 32; from Prophecy, 56-69; from Christian 
experience, 70-78 ; from achievements of Christianity, 79-1 1 1. 

Experience, Christian, as an evidence of Divine origin of Chris- 
tianity, 70-78 ; attests the soul -satisfying nature of Christian- 
ity, 70; attests a real communion with Deity, 72; attests 
Divine origin of its phenomena, 73; its evidence cumulative, 
75; its evidence though individual not invalid, "j^i) the earli- 
est and most central of all Christian evidences, ']']. 

Greeks, furnished a preparation for Christianity, 116; yet op- 
posed, 119. 
Grotius, Hugo, his exposition of international law, 108. 

International law, relation of Christianity to, 107. 

Jesus, the Miracle, 14, 35, 51 ; His Person an evidence of 
Christianity, 48-52 ; such perfection necessary to the com- 
pleteness of the Christian system, 51 : — His teachings an evi- 
dence of Christianity, 52-55 ; Divine origin of, proved by 
freedom from error, 53 ; and by their originality, 53. 

Judaism, a preparation for Christianity, 115; yet antagonistic, 
115. 

Jurisprudence, modern, 104; influence of Christianity on, 104. 

Miracle, the moral, a sinless Jesus, 15. 

Miracles, of Christ, their place as evidence, 10-13 ; their rela- 
tion to His teachings, 11 ; terms for, in Gospels, 13; defined, 
14 : — objections to, considered, 14-21 ; a part of Christ^s mes- 
sage of love, 23 ; essential to consistency of Gospel narra- 
tive, 23. 

Miracles, evidence from, 33-55 ; for whom designed, 33 ; their 
evidential value now, 33 ; ** greater " accomplished by apos- 
tles, 34. 



INDEX.. 159 



Nature, uniformity of, implied in "miracle," 14; exists for 
mental and moral ends, 14. 

Paul, his conversion, an evidence of Christianity, 43-48. 

Penology, influence of Christianity on, 104. 

Prophecy, as an evidence relied on by Jesus and Apostles, 26- 
29; Messianic, a characteristic of Jewish history, 26; evi- 
dence from, 56-69 ; found in Old Testament, 57 ; Rationalis- 
tic explanation of, 58 ; has precedence of all other evidence, 
60; " type " to be distinguished from, 61 ; an organic whole, 
64; conditional, 66 ; in New Testament, 67; the advents in 
relation to, 68 ; misuse of unfulfilled, 68. 

Religion, Christianity a universal, 147-149 ; its doctrines har- 
monize vi'ith universal truth, 147 ; its teachings vindicable to 
human reason, 147; presents a perfect standard with helps 
to its attainment, 148; accords w^ith psychological law, 148; 
keeps pace with progress of race, 148 ; makes itself at 
home in all the world, 149. 

Resurrection of Jesus, as an evidence of Christianity, 36-43 ; 
still available as evidence, 36 ; five theories of, investigated, 
36-39; direct evidence of, 39-43. 

Romans, furnished a preparation for Christianity, 120 ; opposed 
it, 123. 

Science, its approach toward the discovery of a power not 

mechanical or chemical, 19. 
Slavery in New Testament, 97. 
Socialism, 104. 

Vicarious salvation, not immoral, 90; liable to perversion, 90. 



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